TO WASHINGTON. : 531 
serves to be noticed. When the tide comes into this 
bay, as well as in all others, it is resorted to by large 
numbers of fish from the Gulf, to feed. The water may 
then be from five to ten feet deep, and is of the same 
temperature as that of the Gulf. But after a norther 
has blown for twelve or twenty-four hours, its tempera- 
ture is so much reduced, that the fish become chilled, 
and not having strength enough to make their way 
over the bar, now more shallow than ever, they often 
lie there in heaps. At these times the people go to 
the bar with their wagons, and with a spear or fork 
pick up the finest fish, weighing from ten to a hundred 
pounds, and thus carry away loads) Many were 
brought in to-day, and they proved a great luxury to 
us. * 
To-day, again, it was impossible to sail, for we 
* In the remarkable journey of Alvar Nuiies Cabeca de Vaca from 
Florida to Cinaloa, on the Pacific coast, between the years 1527 and 
1535, he remained for eight months among a tribe of Indians on the 
Gulf of Mexico, whom he calls the Avavares. “They were all,” he says, 
“ignorant of time, either by the sun or moon, nor do they reckon by 
the month or year; but they better know and understand the differences 
of the seasons, when the fruits come to ripen, the fish to die, and the. 
position of the stars, in which they are ready and practised.” 
The season when the fish come to die, has never been understood. 
When Mr. Buckingham Smith, the learned translator and commentator 
of the “Narrative of Cabeca de Vaca,” asked me, on my return from 
Mexico, whether in my journeys along the northern shores of the 
Gulf, I had seen or heard any thing that would enable me to elucidate 
the passage in question, the incident I have named as happening annu- 
ally on. the bars of the lagoons, when the northers blow, at once oceur- 
red to me; and on explaining what I had witnessed, Mr. Smith at once 
agreed with me that this was the true solution of the passage 
