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As we approached the anchorage, we saw rows of fishing-stakes projecting half way across the straits, and many boats and prahus, and a considerable number of square-rigged vessels, some of them being Dutch men-of-war. Over the mangrove bushes appeared in the distance a tower or two, a few flag-staffs, and here and there the roofs of some of the most lofty houses.
From 4 to 6 this evening we passed between two lines of fishing-stakes, indeed we found that a number of large stakes were driven into the mud banks, in different situations, outside the entrance of the Old Calabar, some of them a considerable distance from the land; and there were long lines of them a short distance from each other.
She went out into the straits in the big prau that floated the star and crescent of Johore over its stern, to look at the fishing-stakes, and was nearly wrecked by a great water-spout that burst within a few feet of them. Then she went twice to Johore, and gazed in open-eyed wonder at the palaces of the Sultan and at the fort in which her uncle was an officer.
The coasts and rivers abound with excellent and wholesome fish in the greatest variety, and of the most delicious flavors; but such is the miserable state of society, that few Malays have either the inclination or the inducement to venture beyond the mouths of their rivers in quest of them; and even there they are more indebted to the industry of the Chinese with their fishing-stakes than to their own labor for the supply of their markets.
A boom or dam of fishing-stakes was constructed across the river one-eighth of a mile below the fort, a large armed prow was moored in the center of the river, mounting two long twelves, and a masked battery opposite to the right, the number of guns unknown. The reach which these forts command is a mile and a half.
They are called fishing-stakes, and boats certainly do sometimes go and make fast to them for that purpose, as well as to wait the turning of the tide, when they are going to places at any distance along the coast, yet one would think that they would hardly take so much trouble as to bring, and place so great a number as there are, and many of them several miles from the land, merely for the above purposes.
There is a walk up to the town about eight miles from the mouth of the river; here the fishing-stakes nearly extend across the river, beside two miserable forts, mounting each five or six pounders, to defend the river. The population is seven thousand men, Malays, Buguese, and Dayers, and about two thousand Chinese. Formerly the territory of Mompava extended as far as 1° north latitude.
On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.
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