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Updated: June 6, 2025
For the first two days they got only two small bandicoots and found no water; they then turned back, and obtaining a little water in a hollow of the cliffs, left by the shower which had passed over, they halted under them to fish, and speared a sting-ray; this they had feasted on yesterday, and to-day came from the cliffs to look for us without any thing to eat at all.
For the first two days they got only two small bandicoots and found no water; they then turned back, and obtaining a little water in a hollow of the cliffs, left by the shower which had passed over, they halted under them to fish, and speared a sting-ray; this they had feasted on yesterday, and to-day came from the cliffs to look for us without any thing to eat at all.
To my regret and annoyance, I found that he had baked one third of our whole supply, so that it would be necessary to use more than our stated allowance, or else to let it spoil. It was the more vexing, to think that in this case the provisions had been so improvidently expended, from the fact of our having plenty of the sting-ray fish, and not requiring so much bread. April 14.
There were now plenty of sting-ray fish along the beach again, and I was desirous, if possible, to get one for a change of diet; my friend, however, had so much to eat, that though he said he should like fish too, I could not get him to go about a mile to the back of the sand-hills, to cut a stick from the scrub, to make a spear for catching them. May 13.
The sting-ray is circular and flat, with a tail above a foot in length, very thick at the base, and tapering towards the end. Near the middle, on the upper part, it is armed with a long and sharp-pointed sting, finely serrated on two sides, which the fish can raise or depress at will.
On the 19th, I sent out one of the boys to try and get a sting-ray to vary our diet, but he returned unsuccessful. During the forenoon I was seized with a violent attack of dysentery, accompanied with diabetes, from which I suffered extremely. The overseer was affected also, but in a less violent degree.
The delightful, and, indeed, indispensable amusement of bathing, is particularly dangerous in these countries. In the shallows you are liable to be struck by the sting-ray, a species of skate, with a sharp barb about the middle of its tail; and the effect of the wound is so serious, that I have known a person to be in a state of frenzy from it for nearly forty-eight hours.
Again we quote Alexander's History, page 49: "Several kinds of food were forbidden to the women on pain of death, viz., pork, bananas, cocoanuts, turtles, and certain kinds of fish, as the ulua, the humu, the shark, the hihimanu or sting-ray, etc. The men of the poorer class often formed a sort of eating club apart from their wives. These laws were rigorously enforced.
They looked like ravenous wolves about their prey, and when they returned to the camp at night, they were loaded with as much cooked meat as they could carry, and which they were continually eating during the night; I made a meal upon some of the sting-ray that was still left, but it made me dreadfully sick, and I was obliged to lie down, seriously ill. April 17.
The blood spurted out in big jets, as from the strokes of a pump, which soon exhausted its strength, and Pecetti dragged it ashore and cut off its tail for a trophy. As the creature was dying it ejected from its stomach a quart or more of small bivalves, which must have been recently swallowed. "That makes the best bait for sharks," said Pecetti: "I always bait with sting-ray when I can get it."
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