62 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



ground, and breaks out again so far off that the in- 

 habitants thereabout boast, as the Spaniards do of 

 their river Anus, that they feed divers flocks of 

 sheep upon a bridge. And, lastly, for I would not 

 tire your patience, one of no less authority than 

 Josephus, that learned Jew, tells us of a river in 

 Judea that runs swiftly all the six days of the week, 

 and stands still and rests all their sabbath. 



But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and 

 tell you some things of the monsters or fish, call 

 them what you will, that they breed and feed in 

 them. Pliny the philosopher says, in the third 

 chapter of his ninth book, that in the Indian sea 

 the fish called balsena, or whirlpool, is so long and 

 broad as to take up more in length and breadth 

 than two acres of ground ; and of other fish of two 

 hundred cubits long ; and that in the river Ganges 

 there be eels of thirty feet long. He says there that 

 these monsters appear in that sea only when the tem- 

 pestuous winds oppose the torrents of waters falling 

 from the rocks into it, and so turning what lay at 

 the bottom to be seen on the water's top. And he 

 says that the people of Cadara, an island near this 

 place, make the timber for their houses of those 

 fish-bones. He there tells us that there are some- 

 times a thousand of these great eels found wrapt 

 or interwoven together. He tells us there that it 

 appears that dolphins love music, and will come, 

 when called for, by some men or boys that know 

 and use to feed them, and that they can swim as 

 swift as an arrow can be shot out of a bow ; and 



