THE SHARK- 269 



In olden times sharks were considered to be 

 allied to the Leviathans of the deep, and afforded 

 then, as at the present day, amusement to pas- 

 sengers traversing the ocean. The following 

 account of the capture of one of these voracious 

 animals, from Dr. Fryer's " New Account of 

 India and Persia," published in 1698, is 

 amusing : — 



' ' Two of the lesser offspring of the great Le- 

 viathan (the weather being calm, these sort of 

 them else not visible, being of no swift motion) 

 came sailing after us ; our men, as eager of 

 them as they of their prey, hastened their en- 

 gines for to take them ; which no sooner in the 

 water but each of them, guided by some half-a- 

 dozen delicately-coloured little fishes, which, for 

 their own safeguard, perform the office of pilots, 

 (they never offering to satisfy their hunger on 

 them,) who lead them to the baits ; when they, 

 turning their bellies up, seize upon them on their 

 backs, hook themselves in the toils, beating the 

 sea into a breach, and not without a great many 

 hands are drawn over the sides of the ship ; 



the large lake Vaihiria was the ventricles or gills ; while the 

 lofty Orehena, the highest mountain in the island, probably 

 six or seven thousand feet above the sea, was regarded as its 

 dorsal fin ; and its ventral fin was Matavai." — Ellis's Poly- 

 nesian Researches, vol. i. page 167. 



