Catching Fish with Dynamite 229 



to see at this time of the year, 1 on account of the 

 height of the grass. Awaiting the good season and 

 our departure for the north-west, I did some fishing 

 in the risers. I possessed nets and hooks, but I 

 preferred to use dynamite for this purpose. Upon 

 finding a deep place where the current is not strong, 

 I throw there during the day a quantity of chopped 

 meat, maggots, cooked corn-flour, boiled rice, etc., 

 to attract fish. Encouraged by this free distribution, 

 they soon swarm within a narrow limit, and greedily 

 dart at each handful of ground bait. At this moment 

 I take one or several dynamite cartridges, according 

 to the depth of the water and the number of fish, 

 and having lit the fuses with which, in addition to 

 detonators, they are supplied, I throw them into the 

 water with a fresh supply of food. 



While the fish are confidently feeding around the 

 cartridges a little smoke rises to the surface ; then, 

 after about a minute, a deep, violent explosion up- 

 raises the water within a radius of fifteen yards, shak- 

 ing the ground and surrounding rocks ; a multitude 

 of bubbles rise from the bottom, and fish appear 

 from all sides, some floating on their bellies, others on 

 their backs. Twenty men dash into the water, and, 

 with hand-nets already prepared, gather in the 

 unfortunate victims which still struggle enough to 

 make them unseizable with the hands. At one sweep 

 I have thus captured 103 fish weighing between three 

 and eight pounds each. Generally there were always 

 twenty of them of good weight. Silures (cat-fish) are 



1 The rainy season. 



