here were, he
said, some five or six kinds, but they were all of the groper family.
One of three which was brought on board was discovered floating on the
surface when the ship was five miles off Tanna. A boat was lowered, but
on getting up to it, the crew found they were unable to lift it from the
water; it was, however, towed to the ship, hoisted on board, and cut
into three parts, the whole of which were weighed, and reached over 300
lbs. In colour it was a dull grey, with large, closely-adhering scales
about the size of a florin; the fins, tail, and lips were blue. Another
one, weighing less, had a differently-shaped head, with a curious,
pipe-like mouth; this was a uniform dull blue. A similar upturning from
the ocean's dark depths of strange fish occurred during a submarine
earthquake near Rose Island, a barren spot to the south-west of Samoa.
The disturbance threw up vast numbers of fish upon the reefs of Manua,
the nearest island of the group, and the natives looked upon their great
size and peculiar appearance with unbounded astonishment.

Without desiring to bore the reader with unnecessary details of my own
experiences in the South Seas, but because the statement bears on the
subject of this article--a subject which has been my delight since I was
a boy of ten years of age--I may say that, nine years after the loss of
Captain Hayes's vessel on Strong's Island, I was again shipwrecked on
Peru, one of the Gilbert, or, as we traders call them, the "Line"
Islands. Here I was so fortunate as to take up my residence with one of
the local traders, a Swiss named Frank Voliero, who was an ardent
deep-sea fisherman, and whose catches were the envy and wonder of the
wild and intractable natives among whom he lived; for he had excellent
tackle, which enabled him to fish at depths seldom tried by the natives,
who have no reason to go beyond sixty or eighty fathoms. In the long
interval that had elapsed since my fishing days in the Carolines and my
arrival at Peru Island, I had gained such experience in my hobby in many
other parts of the Pacific as falls to few men, and the desire to fish
in deep water, and get something that astonished the natives of the
various islands, had become a passion with me. Voliero and myself went
out together frequently, and, did space permit, I should like to
describe the fortune that attended us at Peru, as well as my fishing
adventures at Strong's Island.

In a former work I have endeavour