SHARKS CHULORGFORMED BY CLIMATH. 115 
ating powers are, as in sleep, quietly at work. Entering the 
dining room of the Victoria Hotel for our breakfast soon after 
eight o’clock one morning, and finding as usual at that early 
hour nearly a hundred seats at the tables unoccupied, we said to 
the head waiter, ‘“‘ There are a good many lazy persons in this 
hotel.” <“* Yes,” he replied; ‘it’s the place to be lazy—that’s 
what people are here for.” It is only occasionally that the ama- 
teur fishermen have life and vim enough even to fish, being, like 
the author, satisfied to simply sail over the beautiful waters. 
Some persons explained to us, upon their return from a fishing 
" excursion, that the fish they caught were not ‘‘ gamy,” and made 
none of those heroic struggles for freedom which give spirit and 
zest to piscatory sports in northern waters. The fish which they 
caught were large, fat and beautifully colored. Sharks abound, 
and come near enough to the surface to be soothed and quieted 
by the Bahama air, As the tempting bait floats near the top of 
the water about three rods from the boat, it is very interesting 
to watch, in the clear water, the movements of the sharks as they 
reconnoiter and cautiously approach the savory but deceitful 
prize. The larger ones manifest the prudence so characteristic 
of age, while those smaller and younger, as our sable yachtman 
forcibly expressed it, ‘jess like de children what den no’ no bet- 
ter,” impetuously rush forward and are caught, towed to the 
boat and shot for their temerity. One of the captured was, with- 
out any court-martial trial, shot in the head, and, with his jaws 
extended to their utmost capacity, exhibited in the court of the 
hotel. Itwas seven and one-half feet long, and had a capacious, 
well-armed and ugly looking mouth—extremely repulsive to all 
except those who have a romantic desire to take part in the old 
drama of “Jonah and the Whale.” It should be said to the 
credit of the Nassau sharks, that while the black divers in the 
clear and transparent waters of the Bahamas must look to them 
