tiiAiM. xvii. \g by Backwater. 197 



than a quarter <>f an hour: with the advancing tide the swirls 

 passed upwards, and I could plainly watch their course into the 

 tar distance. It was clear thai the text at the head of the chapter 

 was closely applicable, and it came into one's mind at once 



" There is a tide in the affairs of fish, 

 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." 



It was not the same at the ebh tide. It was only at the 



commencement of the tl 1 tide that the fish were moving. These 



tish were, 1 am inclined to think, the rock-fish mentioned above, 

 and sometimes Lates ealcarifer. 



But why is it, you will want to know, that the big tish in 

 estuaries cannot lie content to feed in one place, like the big fish 

 in the rivers above tidal influence ? Why is it that they must be 

 for ever advancing with the advancing tide ? You want a reason, 

 and I will give you one. If you place yourself on a projecting 

 rock, or stone-jetty, and watch the first flow of the in-coming tide, 

 you will see innumerable shoals of minute fish, from an inch long 

 and upwards, coasting busily up the river.* They are near the 

 surface, and you can see them well. Keep motionless, and as 

 much out of sight as you can, that you may not frighten them or 

 anything else, but may see them pursuing their natural course. 

 How pretty and sociable they look. Dash into them goes a huge 

 open-mouthed ruthlessdooking monster, and makes a cruel gap 

 in their closely packed column. It is pitiful to behold. Poor 

 little things, how like they are to soldiers when a great round 

 shol has torn through their ranks. They close up again and 

 press on 



" They fill 

 The ranks unthinned though slaughtered still." 



• They coast, because there is always a back-draught, or back-flow of water, at 

 the edge of every stream, in the opposite directum to the main current of the 

 stream, and caused by the stream carrying down, by friction, water that must return 

 to fill up the vacuum it left as soon as it is released from the power of the friction 

 that removed it. This backwater (not to be confounded with the common Indian 

 name fur an estuary), is constant in all rivers throughout their length, and the tide 

 on entering a river, and while still contending with the current of the stream, takes 

 first advantage of this backwater, and accelerates it, till merged in the general inflow 

 of the tide. Small li-h ariahing to ascend a river take advantage of this backwater, 

 which is always winning up each shore, and thus by coasting they get up a river, 

 without having to swim againsl the stream. 



