go SEA FISH OF TRINIDAD 
and you never know what you may come across or draw 
thereout. Do not be disheartened, if after many attempts, 
you have toiled hard and taken nothing. After all, your 
man, or men, have done most of the toiling in bending their 
backs to the oar; very likely when you are giving up in 
despair and returning home, you will (as has happened to me 
on several occasions), hook and land one or two large fish, 
making up for all your chagrin. 
I have alluded to porpoises and the mysterious manner 
they disappear before the ‘“‘remous.’’ Now the sea in the 
vicinity of the Bocas is nearly always being occupied, both as 
a playing and hunting ground by these ocean shikarees. 
There are two varieties that are exceedingly common, the 
‘““marsouen blanc’”’ (local name) or white porpoise, a small 
greyish-brown porpoise weighing but a few hundred weight, 
and the other “marsouen canale’’ or canal porpoise, a dark- 
brown variety, averaging somewhere about a ton in weight. 
They are great destroyers and eaters of fish, and play havoc 
with schools of mackerel, cavalli, and other pelagic fish, and 
this object they achieve in a truly military fashion, going in 
Indian file and throwing out wings to surround their prey. 
I have seen a veritable army of the big porpoise marching in 
this fashion through the sea with extended wings, or perhaps 
it would be more correct to express it in Zulu fashion, horns, 
at regular intervals, jumping and rearing their massive 
bodies right out of the sea, silver glittering chunks of fish 
dropping from their jaws, and note well, the supposed tyrant 
of the seas, the shark, is afraid of the porpoise; he may, and 
doubtless does act as a scavenger or camp follower, but 
attack M. le Marsouen? Never. These herds of porpoise 
do, undoubtedly, drive shoals of pelagic fish near the coasts 
for the fisher’s benefit, but whether the destruction that 
_ they cause counterbalances this or not, is an open question. 
