FISHING' OFF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 135 



numbers clung together in bunches ; but oh, reader, 

 hold your nostrils while they are opened, a description 

 of the perfujne is almost impracticable. If you have 

 met a pretty little animal in the American forests, 

 called a skunk, got a good sniff of his otta not of roses, 

 you may imagine the other, being tolerably similar, 

 only that there was the additional flavor of decom- 

 posed fish. But if we disliked the perfume, and made 

 wry faces over it, the fish did not. They took it with 

 a bolt the moment it reached the bottom. The prizes 

 that we obtained were all rock fish, some of them of im- 

 mense size ; in two or three hours we must have had 

 several hundred-weight in our boat, but unfortunately 

 it commenced to blow, and we were compelled to up 

 anchor, and run for it. Weather on this coast is very 

 variable, not unlike what often will be experienced 

 in the west of Scotland. 



From the ship some of the seamen took a splendid 

 fish, both for table and appearance. By the bum- 

 boat people it was denominated the Cape salmon. 

 As might be supposed, it had no relationship to the 

 salmon family, but belonged, I think, to the same ge- 

 nus as the striped bass of North America. The two 

 are much alike, only the former is without the lateral 

 lines possessed by the latter. This fish is well known 



