Dec. i7, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
979 
An Incident. 
East Wareham, Mass., Dec. 10 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: The following was told me 
by an old whaling captain when in his ninetieth 
year: 
“It was during my second voyage when I was 
a boat steerer. We had been cruising in the 
Indian Ocean with fair luck, the season for 
typhoons was approaching and our captain was 
working the ship to the eastward, intending to 
pass through the straits and make his way into 
the Pacific. We were near the island of Java, 
and raising its coast we cruised along the 
shores till opposite a bay where whalers were 
in the habit of watering their ships. It was in 
1838 or 1839, I am not sure which. There were 
no villages nor inhabitants about the shores of 
this bay so far as we knew, but it was never 
safe in those latitudes to approach the shore un¬ 
armed, and no captain would send a boat ashore 
without a supply of muskets. It was not a 
trifling matter to navigate those waters, as charts 
were very uncertain and not to be relied upon. 
They depended on soundings and records from 
the logs of previous voyagers. 
We got into the bay all right and had our 
anchor down. We did not have chains in those 
days and had to be very careful not to get our 
cables cut with coral. We broke out a lot of 
empty casks and towed them ashore where there 
was a small stream coming out of a gulch with 
quite a little beach making along by it. Where 
we landed the slope was easy, and we rolled 
our casks up above high water and started in 
to fill them. Having plenty of guns and ammu¬ 
nition, we naturally looked for something to 
shoot at. There were plenty of tracks of vari¬ 
ous creatures, some of them not calculated to 
inspire sailors with a desire to penetrate into 
the thick forest; the claw marks were too pro¬ 
nounced and suggestive of cats with black stripes 
or lions. We stood in a group while examining 
these, each man fingering his musket and casting 
somewhat anxious glances toward the timber. 
There was nothing moving in that, however, and 
we went to filling our casks. This took us some 
time, as we had to dip the water into buckets, 
then pour into the cask through a funnel. Be¬ 
fore we were done with this a big snake came 
down the creek and we had an exciting time 
killing him. He was about twelve feet long and 
would have been a bad customer for one man 
to tackle. 
“The mate, who had charge of our boat, was 
anxious to shoot some kind of game and pro¬ 
posed that we come back in the evening and 
wait by the creek till something came out to 
drink. He asked permission from the captain, 
and that evening a boat load of us armed with 
muskets and balls pulled ashore, and after first 
fixing our whale boat so we could launch in a 
hurry, we all hid together where we could watch 
the creek. We had a good large moon to shoot 
by and waited a long time. There was no wind 
and the silence of that black forest was uncanny. 
The moon got higher and higher, we spoke in 
whispers, and grew sleepy as time passed and 
nothing showed. We could not smoke for fear 
of alarming the game. By and by there was a 
sound of heavy footsteps coming through the 
thick underbrush. So much noise gave us con¬ 
fidence that the animal meditated no attack upon 
us, and we got ready. It was very dark in the 
brush where the sounds were, and look, peer 
and squint as we might, not a man of us could 
see a thing. The creature kept back for some 
time, but at last one man excitedly whispered: 
‘I see him; there he is!’ at the same time point¬ 
ing in the direction. ‘Let’s give it to him,’ said 
the mate, and we all aimed and shot together. 
Then every man of us put for the boat, which 
we shoved off and quickly pulled to the ship. 
In the morning we manned the boat again and 
rowed ashore. By daylight we had more cour¬ 
age and advanced boldly. Our game was down 
and dead, killed by one chance ball which struck 
in a suture between the thick folds of skin — an 
Indian rhinoceros.” Walter B. Savary. 
• 
• —. 
Jjlgj 
mAAWUii'imm 
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The Eyesight of Fish. 
To an angler who has studied optics in rela¬ 
tion to the vision of fish it seems strange and 
also a pity that so few zealous anglers realize 
what an important bearing it has upon success. 
Without propounding the science of it, I would 
yet try to impress a consideration or two. 
Most certain it is that fish see more keenly 
and much further than generally suspected under 
certain conditions. On the other hand it may 
easily be conceived that having two mediums 
through which to receive impressions, their dis¬ 
cernment is often blurred and confused by a con¬ 
flict in the operation of light rays through the 
double medium. 
We will take a trout, perhaps the keenest 
visioned thing that swims. There are times 
when you might approach the river bank and 
watch him feed without his noticing you. You 
must have met such instances. Probably he does 
see you, but does not distinguish you. To be 
frightened your form and visage must be de¬ 
fined to him, as belonging to the genus homo; 
no other genus alarms him; but on that matter 
a word or two later. Definition is now lost to 
him; you are hopelessly blurred. He moves 
about his haunt as if you were not there. Now 
ask a friend to cross the stream and show him¬ 
self directly opposite you. At his approach, the 
moment he is visible at all you will see your 
trout cease looking for food and become watch¬ 
ful and quite still. Supposing the stream to be 
twenty yards wide, he will have darted to his 
haunt long before your friend has reached the 
spot opposite to you. Why such a difference? 
To explain through optical formula is unneces¬ 
sary, but plainly it is because the incidences of 
refraction through air to water create under 
certain circumstances immense confusion of rays 
to visual nerves. Optical laws are operating 
against, in the one instance, and for, in the other, 
an interrupted imprint. To put it another way, 
if you can very clearly see a fish in water of 
some depth free from halation, halation will 
obscure that fish's clear vision of yourself. You 
miss a bird upon the wing and say, “The light 
was in my eyes.” There you have it. The prin¬ 
ciple is the same as governs that blinding phe¬ 
nomenon which prevents your seeing the chauf¬ 
feur behind the lights of an approaching auto¬ 
mobile. That is an extreme instance. Now 
think of all the degrees and variations of the 
same law in air, then add to it the further fact 
that light rays are diverted at their impact with 
water, which means that the light under water 
and the light in the air being divergent in their 
rays are apt to make confusion more confounded 
or else—and here is one of my points—inten¬ 
sify clearness. So that we may say as to clear¬ 
ness of definition, everything depends upon the 
point of sight. Every angler may get a rough 
idea as to the clearness with which the fish can 
see him by studying the extent of water into 
which he cannot look without confusion, and take 
it that where he cannot so look, the fish are look¬ 
ing at him with distinctness and vice versa. That 
is one point. 
Another point, with the advantage all on 
the trout’s side, rests on that wonderful pro¬ 
vision of nature to make their eyes telescopical 
at will. Given clear water I should expect a 
trout to be frightened at any man, woman or 
child within a hundred yards, though not at a 
horse or bullock even if sniffing the water. But 
before discussing that, one more optical point is 
this, and one hardly ever considered by the 
angler. It is not necessary that your physical 
form should be visible to the fish to frighten 
him, or that your shadow should fall within the 
range of his vision. He can see you reflected 
in the air sometimes before you can see the 
water wherein he lies. Optics fail to furnish 
any lucid explanation of this singular effect of 
reflections and refractions, just as it fails to 
explain exactly why an oblique ray bends and 
a vertical ray does not bend, or why mirages de¬ 
ceive in the desert. But we know it is so. A 
homely instance in demonstration of this phe¬ 
nomenon may be noticed as you sit in a room 
with a blazing fire obscured to your direct vision, 
and yet you apparently see it blazing away out¬ 
side the window. “A clear, hard blue sky and 
no sport” is often heard, and as often as not 
it is because the fish see your reflection in the 
air though they cannot see you. To them the 
