3i8 



The Barracouta 



Hobson's Bay or Auckland Harbour, the latter the 

 most prolific place for fishing in that I have ever 

 known. 



But getting tired of good living, good pay, and light 

 work, I shipped for England via Burmah, and having 

 put into Port Elizabeth on the way home, we coasted 

 round Cape Colony, at no great distance from the 

 land all the way. And for an ordinary merchantship 

 we caught a surprising number of Barracouta, ' Snoek,' 

 as they are called locally, which I found were naked 

 of scales like those of Australia. This was very strange 

 to me, as those caught in the Indian Ocean off Mauritius 

 were identical, as far as I could see, with the West 

 Indian variety, certainly in point of scales they were. 



These South African Barracouta, or Snoek, were 

 tremendously voracious. I have known them to snap 

 at the bare hook, and I have little doubt but that 

 they are responsible for the frequent losses of patent 

 log-propellers, the small four-bladed fan that revolves 

 on a patent log, faster or slower according to the 

 speed of the vessel behind which it is towed, and 

 registers the number of miles travelled on dials. 



My next experience of Barracouta was in the 

 ' Cachalot,' where, indeed, I made the acquaintance 

 of many new kinds of fish, and vastly enjoyed the 

 pleasure of noting their habits, apart altogether 

 from the joy of making many a good meal when 

 without them we should have gone hungry. On the 

 coast of New Zealand, the Maories taught us a novel 

 plan of catching Barracouta, but only possible to any 

 extent where the fish were as plentiful as they were 

 there. In no other place have I seen the Barracouta 

 swim in shoals of hundreds of thousands, almost as 

 closely packed as mackerel. But then I do not believe 

 that there is any sea in the world so full of fish as that 



