Varieties of fish are found here, beautiful to the eye and delicious to the taste: of these, the best is the red grouper. When on a calm, clear day you glide among these lovely islands, in your boat, you seem to be sailing over a submarine flower-garden, in which clumps of trees, shrubs, flowers, and gravel walks, are planted in wild but regular confusion. My chief employment was afloat, and according to my usual habit, I found no amusement unless it was attended with danger; and this propensity found ample gratification in the whale fishery, the reason for which was just approaching. The ferocity of the fish in these southern latitudes appears to be increased, both from the heat of the climate and the care of their young; for which reason it would seem that the risk in taking them is greater than in the polar seas. From what I am able to learn of the natural history of the whale, she brings forth her young, seldom more than one at a time, in the northern regions, after which, with the calf at her side, the mother seeks a more genial climate, to bring it to maturity. They generally reach Bermuda about the middle of March, where they remain but a few weeks, after which they visit the West-India Islands, then bear away to the southward, and go round Cape Horn, returning to the polar seas by the Aleutian Islands and Behring's Straits, which they reach in the following summer; when the young whale, having acquired size and strength in the southern latitudes, is enabled to contend with his enemies in the north, and here also the dam meets the male again. From my own experience and the inquiries I have been enabled to make, I am tolerably certain that this is a correct statement of the migration of these animals, the females annually making the tour of the two great American continents, attended by their young.