THE REVEB8US 33
Their manner of fishing was so strange and new to our men, that they were willing to comply with them. It was thus: they had ty'd some small fishes they call Heverw by the tail, which run themselves against other fish, and with a cer- tain roughness they have from the head to the middle of the back they stick fast to the next fish they meet; and when the Indians perceive it drawing their line, they hand them both in together. And it was a tortoise our men saw so taken by those fishermen, that fish [the Beverso] clinging about the neck of it, where they generally fasten, being by that means safe from the other fish biting them; and we have seen them fasten upon vast sharks.
When the Indians in the canoe had taken their tortoise, and two other fishes they had before, they presently came very friendly to the boat, to know what onr men would have, and by their directions went along aboard the ships, where the Admiral treated them very courteously. . . .
Proceeding thence, and bearing up closer to Cuba, they saw tortoises of a vast bigness, and in such numbers that they covered the sea. At break of day they saw such a cloud of sea-crows that they darkened the sun, coming from the seaward to the island, where they all lighted; besides them, abundance of pigeons, and birds of other sorts were seen, and the next day there came such swarms of butterflies that they darkened the air, and lasted till night, when the rain carried them away. ...
In the brief description which is here given of the captive " fisher- man-fish, or Reverso, we are told that it has a peculiar asperity along the back. Ferdinand's Historic" has not come down to ns in its original Spanish form^ but is known only in translations, the earliest being that of XJlloa, in Italian. It may be that the English rendering to the effect that the Reverso was armed with " a certain roughness from the head to the middle of the back" does not accurately convey the sense of the original. At all events a slightly different description is given in the French version, which reads: certain petit poisson qui porte de piquants crochus se relevant k contresens de son corps/' etc. The latter characterization agrees better with the porcupine-fish, or Diodon, than the Remora, and both are included imder the term of
- Bever8U8" by the "fathers" of ichthyology, one being called the
spinous, and the other the anguilliform variety.
In the histories of Las Casas and Herrera we read practically the same account of fishing with the Reversus as that given by Ferdinand Columbus. Of similar purport, also, but closely agreeing in literary style with the writings of the famous discoverer, is the account of the same fishing scene in Queen's Gardens which we find in the chronicles of Andres Bemaldez.' We now present this passage in English form.
Chaptib CXXYI
Of a great number of Idands which were Discovered
The Admiral set sail [from Jamaica] with hie three caravels, and sailed 24 leagues towards the west, as far as the gulf Buen Tiempo. ... On Whitsunday, 1494, thej stopped at a place which was uninhabited — ^but not from the in- elemeney of the sky, or the barrenness of the soil — in the midst of a large grove of palm-trees, which seemed to reach from the sea-shore to the very heavens.
t"Hist Bcyes Cat61.," Cap. 126. "^ " VOL, m. — ^3.
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