One day we saw a porpoise in very shallow water playing with her two calves, which were about three feet long. The water scarcely covered them. Being somewhat curious as to the result, I took the rifle and sent a bullet ricocheting across the water just behind her. In great alarm she gathered a calf under each flipper, and the way she made the water fly with her fluked tail propeller in her eagerness to reach deeper water was amusing, but not the less remarkable. I could observe her plainly for a hundred yards, and when she at last disappeared in deep water she was still hugging her calves.
A Pretty Baby
Once at Mullet Key, in Tampa Bay, a man at the quarantine station shot a porpoise that was floundering in the water. I saw that it was about dead, and procuring a boat I towed it ashore. It was a female and seemed to be gravid. I performed the cæsarian operation and found a single baby porpoise nearly two feet long. It was a beautiful animal, the upper half being slate color and the lower half a fine rosy pink. It was sent with other specimens to Washington and a cast made of it.
U.S. Bureau of Fisheries.
Jewfish. (Garrupa nigrita.)
A Manatee or Sea Cow (Trichechus latirostris)
Another day while sailing in Barnes Sound we ran across three manatees feeding on a plant resembling eel grass. As we kept very quiet we were almost upon them before they discovered the boat—then they stood not on the order of going, but went at once, and went in a hurry. The wake they left in the shallow water was equal to that of a large steam tug. For such ungainly looking creatures—the body nearly as large as that of a horse—they were remarkably active in escaping, but made a fearful fuss in doing so. I had several times seen manatees in the St. Lucie River, a tributary of Indian River, but nowhere else, and was much surprised to find them in Barnes Sound.
Angling Along the Florida Keys
About Biscayne Bay the angler will find fishing for large-mouth black bass, bream, etc., on Miami River, and at Arch Creek above, and Snapper Creek below. For salt-water fishing he will have all he can attend to at almost any of the inlets and passes between the keys from Cape Florida to Bahia Honda. Among the best are Bear Cut, Cæsar's Creek, Angelfish Creek, and the channels between Rodriguez, Tavenier, Long, Indian, Mattecumbe, Vaccas and other keys. He will find the various channel fishes, and groupers, snappers, cavalli, kingfish, cero, etc., in addition to ladyfish, ten-pounders and a host of others. If he visits Cocoanut Grove, my old friend, Charles Peacock, will put him on to the best fishing grounds.