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THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST 



[Vol. LV 



which the fishermen carry alive with them; when they 

 see a kassa, they let the taza go after it to stick fast to 

 the kassa; when the taza has seized it, the fisherman 

 throws a harpoon and takes the kassa out of the sea, the 

 taza letting go instantly when exposed to the air. ' The 

 same dictionary gives tasa "a kind of fish which serves 

 as a bait for turtles,"^ but the other dictionaries give for 

 it cJiazo, which name is also recorded by Professor 

 Gudger. Kassa for ''turtle" is of extremely wide dis- 

 tribution and is not primarily a Bantu word, although it 

 is also found as kasi in Tete, that is in the region to 

 which dos Santos refers. 



The oldest forms on record for this word are Sanskrit 

 kacchapas, kagyapas, Avestan kasyapa, hence Persian 

 keshef, Afganistan kasph, Singhalese keshew, Hindu- 

 stani kacchua, kaccha. It is therefore certain that the 

 turtle fishing was brought to the shores of Zanzibar 

 from somewhere in the Indian Ocean. This is in keep- 

 ing with the frequently recorded tortoise-shell trade in 

 the Indian Ocean, but ''opposite the Ganges there is an 

 island in the ocean, the last part of the inhabited world 

 toward the east, under the rising sun itself ; it is called 

 Chryse, and it has the best tortoise shell of all the places 

 on the Erythraean Sea."^ The Chryse Island has been 

 identified with the Malacca peninsula,^ hence the origin 

 of the practise of catching turtles with the remora is 

 most likely to be referred to the East Indies, whence it 

 traveled eastward, to the Torres Strait and Melanesia, 

 and westward to the eastern shores of Africa. 



The earliest definite reference to the remora fishing is 

 contained in a version of the cormorant fishing, as told 

 by Odoric of Pordenone and for the first time printed in 

 Ramusio in 1574, although it can be shown that it was 



6 L. Krapf, "A Dictionary of the Suahili Language," London, 1882, pp. 

 130 f . 



7 Ibid., p. 362. 



8W. H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," London, 1912, 



