OTHER FISH. 
135 
In fact there is a book to be written about 
South American fishing. There must be few 
rivers in which a greater variety of heavy fish 
can be killed than on the Parana. I can do no 
more than mention casually the names of some. 
There is the pacii, excellent to eat, shaped like 
a turbot. It is a curious fish, said to be vege¬ 
tarian and to be caught with melon, potato or 
peach; but the only ones we captured succumbed 
ignominously to raw meat on a hand-line. It 
runs up to forty or forty-five pounds. We 
caught nothing so big; I think six or seven 
pounds was the largest. But once, when 
spinning for dorado, I hooked something great 
and sluggish, which certainly was not a dorado. 
It sagged downstream, for all the world as does 
a big kelt in April, and then sailed about until 
the hold gave. We never saw it; but Pedroso 
was sure that it was a big pacii. 
The last fish to be described is so remarkable 
that, were not the facts well known, one would 
be thought guilty of a traveller’s tale. This is 
the man-eating fish, found all over tropical and 
sub-tropical South America from the Argentine 
to the Guianas. It is called by many names. 
On the Parana it is known as the palometer; 
in Paraguay and Brazil as the piranha; and in 
British Guiana as the pirai; but, whatever it is 
called, it is the child of the devil. It is a 
malign looking brute, short and broad, with 
bulgy eyes, a projecting lower jaw and razor- 
