.100 FISHES OF THE EAST ATLANTIC COAST. 



an experience of more thon fifty years as an angler, reaching from 

 Canada to Florida and from Massachusetts to Colorado, the writer 

 has found no region where fish were so abundant as on this coast. 

 This abundance has existed fi-oni the earliest period in which Florida 

 was known to Europeans. 



Jean Ribault entered the St. Johns River on the first of May, 

 1562, and on that account called it " The River of May." He writes: 

 *' We found it as we went, to still increase in depth and largenesse, 

 boyling and roaring through the multitudes of all kinds of fish." 



Again : " It is a country full of havens, rivers and islands, of such 

 f ruitfulness as cannot by tongue be expressed, and so many sortes of 

 fishes that ye may take them without net or angle so many as ye 

 will ; also great abundance of pearls, which they take out of oysters, 

 whereof is taken along the river side and on the marshes, in so mar- 

 velous abundance as is scant credible." 



The fish and oysters remain to this day, but the pearls are not 

 abundant. 



Among the natural productions of Florida, Ribault mentions the 

 orange; this is worth recording, as most modern writers assert that this 

 tree was introduced by the Spaniards. It was probably the wild orange 

 that these voyagers found, as vast groves of the bitter and sour va- 

 rieties formerly covered thousands of acres of the peninsula, much 

 of which have been removed. It was appropriate that in l,his fa- 

 vored land the sour orange should be placed near the fish ai:d oystei-s, 

 for which its juice affords the proper sauce. 



Captain Bernard Romans, an engineer oflicer, who was employed 

 Iby the British Government during their occupation of Florida, 

 1765-80, in surveying this coast, in his "Concise Natural History of 

 Florida," New York, 1775, thus writes of the fisheries : 



" The whole of the west coast of East Florida is covered with 

 fishermen's huts and flakes ; these are built by the Spanish tisner- 

 men from Havana, who come annually to this coast to the number 

 of thirty sail, and one or two visit Rio d'Ais, or Indian River, and 

 other places on the east coast. The principal fish here, of which the 

 Spaniards make up their cargoes, is the red drum, culled in East 

 Florida a basa They also salt a quantity of fish which they call 



