WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 135 



with large silvery scales and small heads cavallas, I hear 

 them called. 



Whatever their name may be, of one thing I am certain, 

 they make splendid eating, and taste like small mahseer of 

 course everyone knows their taste ! 



I rigged up a bamboo rod, using cast of Loch Leven 

 flies, with the wings cut off, with small pieces of sardine for 

 bait. We made 

 quite good baskets 

 of young bonita, 

 and tunny, and 

 sardines : tunny fry, 

 of course ; a two- 

 year-old tunny 

 would snap strong salmon gut and a full-grown tunny takes 

 a rope as thick as a stylo pen to pull it in ; and lots of 

 time. You can even take them on a tarpon line if you 

 think life is too long. 



A thing I could not understand about this small-game 

 hunting was the way certain silvery fish eluded our efforts 

 to catch them. Whilst other fish ate the finely chopped 

 sardine meat we threw over, and young mackerel and 

 herring, etc., calmly took our hooks baited with pieces of 

 sardine, these flat silvery fish like saucers on edge almost at 

 once grasped our idea they eyed the bait and hook, sailed 

 along the gut of the dropper, examining it closely, sailed up 

 the gut of the cast and said : " No, no, we will take bait with- 

 out a hook, but not this." I wonder why their perception 

 should be so much keener than those of the other fish ; prob- 

 ably none of them had ever seen a hook in their lives. 



But this writing about small fry is " wandering from the 

 point," as the cook said to the eel ; let us get back to whaling 

 or at least to whale-hunting. 



We are off to the west end of San Miguel to go round it and 

 beat about the north side in search of the whales which 

 everyone tells us are to be found there, and the view of glens 

 and woods and fields bathed in sunshine under the cloud- 

 capped hills is very sweetly refreshing. But luxurious rolling 



