144 AMSTERDAM ISLAND. 
great numbers of a red coloured perch, from six inches to a 
foot in length, of most excellent flavour, which, with true 
Epicurean want of feeling, we had the cruelty to drop living 
off the hook into the boiling springs, where it required just 
fifteen minutes to cook them in perfection. Whether it was 
owing to the novelty of the mode of preparation, or to long 
a]:)stinence from good fish, or to the real intrinsic excellence 
of this species of perch, I am not able to decide, but the re- 
past was universally pronounced to he delicious. We caught 
here also another species of perch in great abundance, which 
in my opinion was still superior to the red one. It measured 
from three to four feet in length, the back fin undivided, and 
the ]3ody marked with three brown and three white alternate 
longitudinal stripes. The quantity of cray-fish that were 
crawlino' on the bar of the entrance into the crater, at low 
water, is incredible ; and their voracity for dead carcases was 
so great, that if a seal, plent}^ of which were lying on the 
causcAvays, was thrown in, they swarmed to it in such mul- 
titudes that a boat load might be picked up by the hand in a 
very short space of time. Nor were these marine insects less 
plentiful in the open sea where the ships were lying at anchor. 
Baskets let down into the sea, with morsels of bacon within 
them, or pieces of shark's flesh, were immediately drawn up 
again full of cray-fish. These and the large perch, rock-cod, 
and bream, were caught in such abundance that, I believe, 
a provision of fish for six days was laid in for the two ships^ 
conqoanies, consisting nearly of six hundred men. A whole 
shark, near eleven feet in length, was cut up as bait for cra}^- 
fish. Four young sliarks were found alive in the stomach of 
this voracious animal ; but whether they had been devoured 
7 
