CHAPTER XX. 



CURIOUS FISHES AND MODES OF FISHING. 



VOLCANIC FISHES. 



T is recorded that on several occasions, when 

 those convulsions which precede violent vol- 

 canic eruptions in the great range of the 

 Andes have shattered its enormous masses, 

 and opened deep subterranean chasms and fissures, not 

 only tufa and water have been vomited forth, but also 

 Jishes in very considerable quantities. 



For instance, when an eruption took place of Garguar- 

 ruijo, a mountain 17,500 feet in height, the surrounding 

 country, over a radius of two miles, was covered with 

 the ejected mud and fishes. And a pestilential fever 

 which at one time desolated the town of Huera, was as- 

 cribed to a similar phenomenon in connection with the 

 volcano of Imbaburu. 



We are told that Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, and Sangay 

 in like manner send forth showers of fishes ; sometimes 

 through their summit crater, sometimes through lateral 

 fissures ; and the Indians assert that these fishes are 

 alive. It seems a fact that of the hundreds of fish cast 



