CHAPTER XVI 



THE YELLOWTAIL OF CALIFORNIA 



' Long as a salmon, if not so stout. 

 And springy and swift as a mountain trout.' 



Innes Randolph. 



YOUE angler, ancient or modfern, does not give himself over 

 entirely" to luck or chance. At a little town outside of 

 Herculaneum I noticed a wave of lava from Vesuvius perched 

 on the top of a stone wall, arrested in an extraordinary manner. 

 My cicerone informed me that the flow had been arrested by a 

 statue of the Virgin held up by the local priest. The simple 

 villagers took no chances, and not so far away, across the 

 Mediterranean beyond Sorrento and Capri, they bring out the 

 Virgin to propitiate luck in fishing. In Japan the angler or the 

 fisherman appeals to Ebisu, the god of the fishermen, whose 

 statue, holding a fish, you may see in all Japanese collections. 

 You may buy prayers to Ebisu in the shape of long red ribbons 

 of paper, which are to be burned to the god. In very old times 

 nearly all fishermen gave votive offerings. It may have been a 

 coin tossed into the fountain of Trevi at Eome, or a procession at 

 Messina or an offering of eels at the altar of the temple of Neptune. 

 To-day the votive offering is more often the salutation, ' good 

 luck ! ' or the verse of Walton where Piscator says to Corydon, 

 ' Propitious fortune bless my floating quUl.' 



When one goes yeUowtail angling, whether in a launch or glass- 

 bottom boat, no one wishes him good luck or serves up eels to the 

 gods, for the very reason that if there is a yeUowtail about, it is 

 more than a chance that he wQl take the lure, as he is the fish of 

 the people of Southern California, as the bluefish is to the dwellers 

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