on the table when in season, which is the spring and summer: in the
winter it spawns, and is not so good. When above ten or twelve pounds
in weight it is of a brilliant copper-red on back and sides: the
smaller ones are of a steel-blue on the back, and iridescent when
first caught. It grows to the weight of fifty or sixty pounds, runs in
great schools, and in habits and play when hooked resembles the allied
species _Labrax lineatus_, the striped bass. Cuvier named the species
_Corvina ocellata_, from the black spot which it bears near the tail.

The bottom here was rather foul, being covered with old logs and
branches of the mangroves, which, being a very heavy wood, had sunk
to the bottom and become covered with barnacles and other crustaceae,
which attracted the fish to this spot. They bit well, but so did the
sand-flies: as soon as the breeze died away they came out from the
bushes in clouds, and attacked us so fiercely that we were obliged to
quit.

"We'll go down toward the inlet," said Pecetti: "there's good
fishing-ground and more breeze." So he set the sail, and we ran down
the river, past the yachts, about a mile, where we came to anchor near
a bluff covered with trees, in a deep channel. Here we first caught
blackfish or sea-bass, of small size, but plenty; also snappers,
lively fish of the perch family, of a red color, and from a pound to
two pounds in weight, which usually take a mullet bait, in the swift
current near the surface. Then a school of sheepshead came along,
of which we got a dozen. After these we found bass, of which we took
eight, weighing from six to ten pounds each; also three fine groupers,
the largest twelve pounds. Pecetti caught a Tartar in the shape of
a monstrous sting-ray, four feet across, with a tail three feet long
armed with formidable spines. This creature lives on the bottom, his