FISHIXG WITH FISH. 201 



by the Cubans, by means of the flattened disc on hia 

 head, furnished with suckers, fixed himself on the shell 

 of the sea-turtle, which was common in the narrow and 

 winding channels of the Bowers. " The fish," says 

 Columbus, "will sooner suffer himself to be cut in 

 pieces than let go the body to which he adheres." The 

 Indians drew to the shore by the same cord, the fisher- 

 fish and the turtle. When Gomara, and the learned 

 secretary of the Emperor Charles Y., Peter Martyr 

 d'Anghiera, promulgated in Europe this fact which 

 they had learnt from the companions of Columbus, it 

 was received as a traveller's tale. There is indeed an air 

 of the marvellous in the recital of d'Anghiera, which 

 begins in these words : " Exactly as we follow hares 

 with greyhounds in the fields, so do the natives of Cuba 

 take fishes with other fish trained for that purpose." 

 We now know, from the united testimony -of Rogers, 

 Dampier, and Commerson, that the artifice resorted to in 

 the Bowers to catch turtles, is emploj^ed by the inhabit- 

 ants of the eastern coast of Africa, near Cape IN'atal, at 

 Mozambique, and at Madagascar. In Egypt, at San 

 Domingo, and in the lakes of the valley of Mexico, the 

 method practised for catching ducks was as follows : 

 men, whose heads were covered with great calabashes 

 pierced with holes, hid themselves in the water, and 

 seized the birds by the feet. The Chinese, from the 

 remotest antiquity, have employed the cormorant, a bird 

 of the pelican family, for fishing on the coast : rings are 

 fixed round the bird's neck to prevent him from swallow- 

 ing his prey, and fishing for himself. In the lowest de- 

 gree of civilization, the sagacity of man is displayed in 

 the stratagems of hunting and fishing : nations, who 



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