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The majority of the coast settlers will not eat them, being under the idea that, as they are all but scaleless, they are 'poisonous. This silly impression also prevails with regard to many other scaleless fish on the Australian coast, some of which, such as the trevally, are among the best and most delicate in flavour.
They bite freely at a running bait i.e., when a line is towed astern, and are very good when eaten quite fresh, but, like all of the mackerel tribe, rapidly deteriorate in a few hours after being caught. The majority of the coast settlers will not eat them, being under the idea that, as they are all but scaleless, they are "poisonous."
At times we fished, and one evening, after we had passed the expanse of water at the mouth of the Ohio, Nick pulled a hideous thing from the inscrutable yellow depths, a slimy, scaleless catfish. He came up like a log, and must have weighed seventy pounds. Xavier and his men and myself made two good meals of him, but Nick would not touch the meat. The great river teemed with life.
Of all fish, eels are probably the most interesting, as the least is known of them. This fish attains a length of from 5 ft. to 6 ft., and has a smooth, scaleless body of a dark color, on which large light-yellow spots appear, which give the fish a very peculiar appearance. The pectoral fin is missing, but it has the dorsal and anal fins, which it uses with great ability.
In vain does the Sea Thug endeavour to enwrap himself round and round the body of one of these sinuous, scaleless sea-snakes and fasten on to it with his terrible cupping apparatus of suckers the eel slips in and out and "wolfs" and worries his enemy without the slightest harm to itself.
The generality of the coast settlers look upon most coloured fish as 'bad to eat, if not 'poisonous, and particularly so in the case of the delicious blue groper or blue-fish, the 'leather jacket, and the scaleless bonito, which latter occasionally visit the shores of the colony in large 'schools, and take a bait eagerly.
He deserved it all all labour, all devotion, all sacrifice; I would have toiled up a scaleless Alp, to pluck a flower that would please him. I was ready to quit you all, my beloved and gifted companions, and to live only with him, for him. I could not do otherwise, even if I had wished; for if we are said to have two souls, he was my better soul, to which the other was a perpetual slave.
But beyond, and high above all, as if the spirits of the air had suddenly unveiled their bright abodes, placed in scaleless altitude in the stainless sky, heaven-kissing, companions of the unattainable ether, were the glorious Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by the setting sun.
These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot scaleless, slick things, with corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads.
"Rays, D. 12, 1-8; A. 3-5; P. 21; V. 1-5." Uncommon. Inhabits rocky shores. Flesh firm and well-flavoured. Caught by hook, 16th Aug. 1841. No. 34. SEBASTES? Native name, CUMBEUK. A common inhabitant of rocky shores. Good eating. The specimen was speared by Munglewert, 17th May, 1841. "Rays, D. 14-17; A. 3-8; P. 14; V. 1-5." No. 14. APISTES. Apparently scaleless, and without free pectoral rays.
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