Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/284

226 of North America, make up the whole list. Of these last, however, which are most justly accounted the curse of any country where they abound, we never met with any great abundance; a few indeed there were in almost every place we went into, but never enough to make any occupations ashore troublesome, or to give occasion for using shades for the face, which we had brought out to protect us from such insects.

For this scarcity of animals on the land the sea, however, makes abundant recompense; every creek and corner produces abundance of fish, not only wholesome, but at least as well-tasted as our fish in Europe. The ship seldom anchored in, or indeed passed over (in light winds), any place whose bottom was such as fish generally resort to, without our catching as many with hooks and line as the people could eat. This was especially the case to the southward, where, when we lay at anchor, the boats could take any quantity near the rocks; besides which the seine seldom failed of success, insomuch that on the two occasions when we anchored to the southward of Cook's Straits, every mess in the ship that had prudence enough salted as much fish as lasted them many weeks after they went to sea.

For the sorts, there are mackerel of several kinds, one precisely the same as our English, and another much like our horse-mackerel, besides several more. These come in immense shoals and are taken in large seines by the natives, from whom we bought them at very easy rates. Besides these there were many species which, though they did not at all resemble any fish that I at least have before seen, our seamen contrived to give names to, so that hake, bream, cole-fish, etc., were appellations familiar with us, and I must say that those which bear these names in England need not be ashamed of their namesakes in this country. But above all the luxuries we met with, the lobsters, or sea-crawfish, must not be forgotten. They are possibly the same as are mentioned in Lord Anson's voyage as being found at the island of Juan Fernandez, and differ from ours in England in having many more prickles on their backs and being red