apacious bird is first
seen, it is again observed sailing leisurely away to make a meal upon
the quarry clasped in its talons.

Though sharks are known to be common all along the coast of the
island, still in the harbor of Trincomalee they are particularly so,
where the huge saw-fish also abounds, from ten to twelve feet in
length, including the powerful weapon from which it derives it name.
Many lives have been sacrificed, first and last, to the man-eating
sharks in this beautiful harbor and along the neighboring coast, where
Europeans have been tempted to bathe in the cool, refreshing waters of
sheltered inlets. Some tragic stories are related to the stranger as
to the murderous doings of these monsters of the deep. It is a
singular fact that the dreaded sharks rarely if ever attack the
natives, and so far as we could learn no lives are sacrificed to them
by the pearl divers in the season of their operations. The author has
observed the same discrimination exercised between the whites and the
blacks by this destructive creature in the waters of the West Indies.
Inhabitants of St. Thomas, for instance, dive for sixpences thrown
into that land-locked harbor, with entire immunity from danger, but
certainly no white man would dare to bathe in the same place. Knowing
that sharks abound in the neighboring waters, one actually hesitates
when tempting the negro lads to dive for coins, though assured that
the sharks never molest them.

So also at Aden, situated at the mouth of the Red Sea, the
copper-colored natives of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb dive with
entire confidence in those waters, for silver coin thrown from the
ship's deck; but were the body of a European sailor to strike the
water, it would be devoured by the sharks in a moment; at least, so we
were assured by our captain. Like the tiger and the crocodile, it is
said that a shark which has once tasted human blood neglects
henceforth all other sources of food supply in order to watch for the
bodies of men, women, and children. A shark has been known to follow a
ship closely five thousand miles across the ocean, from San Francisco
to Yokohama. The identity of the creature was established by the fact
that a part of a whale-lance protruded from its body, showing that it
had been wounded in some former encounter with seamen, perhaps in
their effort to rescue a comrade from its terrible jaws.

It may be proper to mention in this connection that the shark referred
to