EDGING SOUTEWAED. 229 



Demerara Kiver literally swarms with sharks, yet I have 

 often seen a negro, clad only in a beaming smile, slip into 

 its muddy waters, and, after a few sharp blows with his 

 open hand upon the surface, calmly swim down to the 

 bottom, clear a ship's anchor, or do whatever job was 

 required, coming up again as leisurely as if in a 

 Bwimming-bath. A similar disregard of the dangerous 

 attributes awarded by popular consent to the shark may 

 be witnessed everywhere among the people who know 

 him best. The cruelties perpetrated upon sharks by 

 seamen generally are the result of ignorance and super- 

 stition combined, the most infernal forces known to 

 humanity. What would be said at home of such an act, 

 if it could be witnessed among us, as the disembowelling 

 of a tiger, say, and then letting him run in that horrible 

 condition somewhere remote from the possibility of 

 retaliating upon his torturers ? Yet that is hardly com- 

 parable with a similar atrocity performed upon a shark, 

 because he vpill live hours to the tiger's minutes in such 

 a condition. 



I once caught a shark nine feet long, which we hauled 

 on board and killed by cutting off its head and tail. It 

 died very speedily — for a shark — all muscular motion 

 ceasing in less than fifteen minutes. It was my inten- 

 tion to prepare that useless and unornamental article 

 BO dear to sailors — a walking-stick made of a shark's 

 backbone. But when I came to cut out the vertebra, I 

 noticed a large scar, extending from one side to the other, 

 right across the centre of the back. Beneath it the 

 backbone was thickened to treble its normal size, and 

 perfectly rigid; in fact, it had become a mass of solid 

 bone. At some time or other this shark had been 

 harpooned so severely that, in wrenching himself free. 



