Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/137

] Kawa Kawa, our crews were abundantly supplied with excellent fish, which the numerous creeks and small beaches around the shores of the bay and river afforded. The more delicious of these were the John Doree (Zeus Australis) and the red mullet; the largest, a kind of mackarel, called yellow tail, and sometimes cavallo, though coarse, was found to be very good eating. Of the last we caught several in the seine, three feet nine inches in length, and weighing nearly fifty pounds: the soles, though small, are very good, and the plaice of large size are equal in flavour to the Dutch fish: the Barracouta is caught in the proper season, which had not arrived before we quitted the place. Sharks of a formidable size are numerous, and of these several new species were captured by us: they are described, together with the rest of our extensive collection of other kinds of fish, by Dr. Richardson, in the zoology of the voyage, amongst which are many genera and species hitherto wholly unknown: his account of them will, I have no doubt, prove a valuable addition to our knowledge of the finny tribes of the southern seas. A description of the birds we collected at New Zealand, will be published in the same work, by Mr. George Robert Gray, of the British Museum.

Our crews maintained very good health, so that it was seldom we had any one of them in the sick report, and then, generally, only for some trifling accidental hurt: but we had the misfortune to lose one of our shipmates, and in him one of