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Curious Horse-Fish

(39) intense disgust; "why, here's a tremen- than one of the great trap spiders, erronedous big toad comin' up now, sorr. Bad ously called tarantulas; as large and big luck to the river, but it's chock-full of as a small mouse, which it was not at all bastes! I'd like to know what 'ull come unlike at a little distance, its bloated up next?" "Why, you get all the sport, Paddy," said I. "You've got a terrapin now." "Sure, now, is it a sarafin, sorr? Well, body and legs being thickly covered with long brown hairs; a most hideous-looking creature it was. I raised my foot to stamp upon it. Before, however, I could I niver! I thought a sarafin had wings, kill it, it made a quick dart into its hole, and couldn't sit down, sorr, having noth- into which it disappeared so suddenly ing to sit down upon but only wings." that I had scarcely time to see what had "Nonsense, Pat; but you weren't so far become of it. This was easily accounted off when you said it was a toad. The for when I came to examine its hidingterrapin is a water tortoise, and the Hot- place. Its retreat was a shaft sunk to a tentots call it "schellpaad," or shelled toad. considerable depth in the soil perpendicu- The queer little fellow is something be- larly; its sides beautifully smooth and tween a turtle and a tortoise, and would cylindrical. The mouth or entrance of no doubt make very good soup; but you the shaft was covered with a round cover had better throw him in again." or flap, precisely like a gun wad, which And so Paddy, giving him a touch with exactly fitted the orifice, to which it was his foot, sent the fellow back again into attached by a flexible hinge. This lid his native element, where he soon scuttled could be closed when it retreated, and so away out of sight. Presently a fine eel precisely did the flap fit that it was a took the bait, and was triumphantly most difficult matter to discover where it landed. This, with some three dozen entered, even when standing close to it. mullet, was not a bad day's sport, I A more perfectly contrived retreat it is thought, as we put up our tackle and pre- impossible to imagine. Our admiration pared to make tracks homeward to the at its ingenuity, however, did not prevent fort. Just as I was in the act of taking us from digging, as Paddy would insist my haversack up from the ground to put upon calling it, the tryantelope out of its it on my shoulders, to my astonishment I earth, and destroying this unsightly saw what I took for a mouse crawling out venomous creature. of it. I was putting my hand down On our way back to the fort an old quietly to get hold of it, when I was trapper, who lived in a mud hut just outpulled suddenly backward by Patrick side the gates, begged hard for the body of the iguana, which I gave him, on con- Kean. "Halloa! mind what you're doin'," said dition that he saved me the trouble of he. "It's not a mouse at all, sorr. It's a skinning it. As I passed his hut in the tryantelope." "A what?" said I. "Sure it's a big hairy spider they calls a tryantelope, and its wenemous as a sarpint."

And sure enough, when I regarded it more closely, it was neither more nor less evening I found that he had already cooked the tail of the iguana. As the meat on it looked very white and delicate, I was induced by him to taste it. I found it, as he said, very sweet, and something like chicken, but more insipid.

Thus ended my first day's fishing in South Africa. From that time I was cinating though it might be) of my society. never without a supply of fresh fish.

Sometimes there were heavy tropical rains, which caused the Great Fish River to rise from two to three feet in depth to upwards of thirty feet in the course of twenty-four hours. When this was the case, two or three of my bank lines caught for us plenty of fine eels, so that when my military comrades rode out from head-quarters, some fourteen miles distant, to pay me a visit, they carried back such a charming report of the excellence of my cuisine that they soon came again, quite as much to partake of the un-