Due South; or, Cuba Past and PresentBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
Due South; or, Cuba Past and Present
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Cuba
them make your own change, for they are apt to take money away for
this purpose and to forget to return. Negro nature is frail,
characterized at Nassau by theft and licentiousness, but great crimes
are rare. If you have occasion to hire a boat for a sail in the
harbor, be sure to find and employ "Bushy," a tall, intelligent
darkey, the best boatman and stroke-oar in Nassau.
Bushy showed us what he called a fish-whip, made from the whipray, a
fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body
shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering
from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch
at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a
good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the
Bahamas. We saw, just landed at Nassau, a jew-fish, which takes the
same place here that the halibut fills at the North, being cut into
steaks and fried in a similar manner. They are among the largest of
edible fish, and this specimen weighed about four hundred pounds.
According to Bushy, at certain seasons of the year the jew-fish lies
dormant upon the sandy bottom, and refuses to take the bait. In these
transparent waters he is easily seen when in this condition, and the
native fishermen then dive down and place a stout hook in his mouth!
Though this may sound like a "fish story," we were assured by others
of its truth. Bushy undertook to give us the names of the various
fishes which abound here, but the long list of them and his peculiar
pronunciation drove us nearly wild. Still a few are remembered; such
as the yellow-tailed snapper, striped snapper, pork-fish, angel-fish,
cat-fish, hound-fish, the grouper, sucking-fish, and so on. Both
harbor and deep sea fishing afford the visitor to Nassau excellent
amusement, and many sportsmen go thither annually from New York solely
for its enjoyment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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