PREFACE 



" Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. 

 " Why, as men doa-land ; the great ones eat up the little ones." 



Pericles. 



THIS little book, insignificant though it appears, 

 represents the condensed experience of over thirty 

 years' fishing and studying the habits and hatmts of 

 fishes in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Paria, and has been 

 written with two main objects. One is to interest the anglers 

 of the home-land, by informing them that there are other 

 places besides the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Coast for 

 the chase of the wily "tarpon" and the huge "manta" or 

 " devilfish " ; while I hope also to create local interest in that 

 natural bank we shall before long have to draw heavily 

 on — our resources of sea-food. 



The sea is the mother of many mysteries as yet unknown, 

 and it is really only in its exploration that man can truly 

 realize what an insignificant pigmy he is. Many of the able 

 leader writers of the present day, talk jubilantly and vain- 

 gloriously about the triumphal march of intellect, but it is 

 to be questioned whether the opinion of Isaac Newton, after- 

 wards endorsed by Thackeray, is not the true way of regard- 

 ing the capacities of human reason. Both these great 

 writers say, " that it always had been as it was, and would 

 be, but as a little child picking pebbles on the great sea- 

 shore," and that the chief result of their knowledge was to 

 show them how little they knew. 



In my preliminary canter, I have probably prefaced 

 rather vaingloriously with the thirty years' experience. 

 What little I have gathered, I now give freely to the public, 

 hoping that therein the proverbial grain of wheat may be 

 found. Soon after Porto Rico became a portion of the 



