18 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA. 
blacken, and the clouds to gather to the westward, 
and the wind suddenly flew round to that quarter, 
and blew with great violence; so we dropped 
anchor at once, just under some green little islands 
marked in the charts as Cayo Boca and Catyo 
Marquess. While lying here, in two fathoms 
water, in torrents of rain, the crew were busy 
fishing, in which they had much success. Some 
of the fishes they obtained were of great beauty, 
which I will endeavour to describe. The most 
numerous kind was a thick-set fish of considerable 
size, called a groper, covered with olive-coloured 
irregular spots ; the inside of the mouth and throat 
was of a brilliant vermilion. Another kind, which 
they called, though by a misnomer, a yellow-tail, 
had its body marked with longitudinal bands 
of delicate pink and yellow alternately ; the fins 
were bright yellow, and the tail fine pale crim- 
son. There was another somewhat like this, 
but much larger, that they denominated a market- 
fish, of a ruddy silvery tint, with very large scales, 
the fins and tail bright crimson. Then there was 
a hog-fish, of singular beauty, shaped somewhat 
like a perch, with silvery grey scales, the head 
marked all over with fantastic streaks of brilliant 
violet blue, like the stripes on a zebra’s head. In 
these tropical seas, even the veiy fishes, which in 
our climate are almost universally marked by an 
unvarying dulness of tint, partake of the same 
rich and gorgeous colouring, with which nature 
has delighted to bedeck the insects and birds of 
these paradisaical groves. These, however, were of 
the genera Spams and Lahrus ; the sea-breams and 
wrasses, tribes which might be called the parrots’ 
and finches of the finny race, for their gorgeous 
