190 TROPIC DAYS 



knows nothing of the salt sea, and its aboriginal proto- 

 type contents himself with milder and generally less 

 remunerative kind of sport than that in which his 

 bolder cousins revel. Such a man, however, may 

 possess aquatic lore of which the other is admittedly 

 ignorant, and be apt in devices towards which the 

 attitude of the salt-water man is adverse, if not con- 

 temptuous. The fresh-water man is skilful in the use 

 of a net shaped something like the secondary wings of 

 a certain species of moth, and expanding and closing 

 similarly. It is made of fine twine (one-inch mesh), 

 preferably from the bark of one of the fig-trees or the 

 brown kurrajong, tightly stretched on two pieces of 

 lawyer-cane each bent to form the half of an irregular 

 ellipse. This net ("moor-garoo") is manipulated by two 

 men working in concert, principally for the capture of 

 eels. They do not wait for the eel to come to them, but 

 by shrewd scrutiny discover its whereabouts under the 

 bank of the creek or among the weeds and roots. Then 

 one silent man holds the net widespread, or adroitl}^ 

 dodges it into intercepting positions, while the other 

 beats the luckless fish in its direction with more or less 

 fluster. The persistency with which the creeks are 

 patrolled by men with spears, netted and poisoned, 

 invites one to marvel that any fish escape, and yet once 

 again quite a haul is made. 



That great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, once in his 

 life made a joke and confessed to it, with apologies for 

 its littleness. Lunching at a tavern in the Isle of Wight, 

 he asked: "Oh, is not this a very large chop for such a 

 small island ?" Similarly, I have been astonished at 

 the apparent disproportion between the size of the eel 

 and the insignificance of the creek whence the exultant 

 black has hauled it. 



An instance of the poor part which the slimmest eel 



