AMONG THE PISHES OF JAMAICA. 
BY SHANDON. 
While Tur ANGLER’s friends and sub- 
scribers have been wrapped in fur-lined 
overcoats and -gratefully accepting the 
genial warmth afforded by 
stoves and steam generators, shaking 
hands with ‘‘Tom and Jerry,” and 
clearing ‘‘stone fences,” I have been 
blazing 
basking under tropical skies, swayed to 
and fro in a grass hammock, suspended 
between two immense cocoa palms, by 
breezes impregnated with the aromatic 
odors which lime, nutmeg and cinna- 
mon groves breathe, while old ocean, 
gently fretting against its coral bars 
with musical murmur, supplied a 
dreamy symphony. 
The languor of tropical existence is 
delightful, and for awhile split bam- 
boos and piscatorial lures are forgotten. 
Sufficeth it to live and have one’s being, 
to watch the chameleon lizard as it 
runs along the boughs in search of in- 
sect prey, or the ruby-crusted humming 
bird flitting like a mammoth bee from 
flower to flower, for ‘‘ where the bee 
sucks there is he.” To forget the city’s 
turmoil, its rush and weary din, the 
endless progress of street cars, the 
rattle and crash of the elevated roads, 
together with the thousand and one in- 
conveniences of mercantile turmoil, is 
to die the death of the righteous, but a 
resurrection in one of ‘‘the isles,” sur- 
rounded by towering peaks and charm- 
ingly indented bays, with glorious 
vegetation reflected almost in the clear, 
blue water, is an elysian awakening to 
be experienced to be fully identified 
and enjoyed. 
Here revels the kingfish in all his 
glory, the wild, untamable barracouta, 
the deep set, broad backed grouper, 
whose azure blue and silver scales give 
him such a gorgeous appearance as to 
engender the fancy that he belongs to 
Arabianitish waters presided over by 
genil or conjured up in the imagination 
of some prehistoric Captain Cook. The 
number and variety of fish abounding 
in West Indian waters is so great as to 
almost defy description. Even the 
rivers or brooks, for they are no more 
than volcanic ravines, supplied for the 
most part by rain water, teem with a 
small gray mullet, and a fish common 
to most of the islands, called Cvo cro. 
The mullet rarely reach a pound in 
weight, but the Cvo cro is killed as 
heavy as eight pounds. I yesterday 
saw one of six pounds nine ounces, 
which had run intoa wooden sluice used 
for turning a sugar mill wheel, and 
been there captured by some of the 
mill hands. It is a handsomely shaped 
fish, not unlike the striped bass, but 
with a larger head and mouth than the 
mullet, gamey and giving an immensity 
of trouble. This is for the most part 
due to their great strength, the fine 
tackle which must be used to insure suc- 
cess, and the heavy tree fern and palm 
vegetation interlaced with pampas 
growth which at intervals forms an 
arcade over the pools where they lie 
perdu. . Any small gay fly used for 
white trout will tempt them, but the 
death killer is a small grasshopper 
found on the bank, of which a quarter- 
developed nigger will procure a suffici-_ 
ency to meet a morning’s fishing for a _ 
