FISHES AND FISHING. 
205 
parent, orange-coloured light, which gives the finish- 
ing touch to the magnificent picture. 
Nearly the same uniformity prevails in the light- 
ning which almost every night at this season is wont 
to play in the western sky. A dark gloomy-looking 
cloud towers up from the horizon, which every two 
or three seconds becomes a fiood of soft light like the 
concentrated glory which we sometimes see in paint- 
ings representing heaven. Sometimes the light gleams 
fitfully from behind the cloud, revealing its outline in 
stern detail, and gilding the edge ; at others a faint 
glimmer peeps as it were round one corner, and 
tremulously quivers. Then a full blaze appears 
again, and a dazzling zigzag cleft in the midst of it, 
darting upwards. This zigzag track is in almost every 
broad flash, as if the sky, like a solid wall of light, 
had split and closed again, revealing the most intense 
lustre behind it. All the time, perhaps some hours, 
not a sound of thunder is audible. 
FISHES AND FISHING. 
I accompanied an old negro one morning, when he 
paddled out in his canoe to examine his fish-pots. 
The canoe was, as usual, a single log of the Silk- 
cotton tree, shaped and hollowed by the hands of the 
fisherman himself, partly by the aid of the axe, partly 
by fire. It was long and narrow, and brought to a 
rounded point at each end. The owner squatted 
down in the stern, and, with a single paddle held in 
both hands, gave two or three short strokes on one 
