t to engage the people of the country
to furnish us with the necessaries we wanted, we were obliged to be
contented with what we could procure in the neighbourhood of the
port. We caught fish here in tolerable quantities, especially when the
smoothness of the water permitted us to hale the seyne. Amongst the
rest, we got here cavallies, breams, mullets, soles, fiddle-fish, sea
eggs, and lobsters; and here, and in no other place, met with that
extraordinary fish called the Torpedo, or numbing fish, which is in
shape very like the fiddle-fish, and is not to be known from it but by
a brown circular spot of about the bigness of a crown-piece near the
centre of its back; perhaps its figure will be better understood when
I say it is a flat fish, much resembling the thorn-back. This fish is
of a most singular nature, productive of the strangest effects on the
human body; for whoever handles it, or happens even to set his foot
upon it, is presently seized with a numbness all over him, but more
distinguishable in that limb which was in immediate contact with it.
The same effect, too, will be, in some degree, produced by touching
the fish, with any thing held in the hand; for I myself had a
considerable degree of numbness conveyed to my right arm through a
walking cane, which I rested on the body of the fish for some time,
and I make no doubt but I should have been much more sensibly affected
had not the fish been near expiring when I made the experiment: For it
is observable that this influence acts with most vigour when the fish
is first taken out of the water, and entirely ceases when it is
dead, so that it may be then handled, or even eaten, without any
inconvenience. I shall only add that the numbness of my arm on
this occasion did not go off on a sudden, as the accounts of some
naturalists gave me reason to expect, but diminished gradually, so
that I had some sensation of it remaining till the next day.

To the account given of the fish we met with here, I must add, that
though turtle now grew scarce, and we met with none in this harbour of
Chequetan, yet our boats, which, as I have mentioned, were stationed
off Petaplan, often supplied us therewith; and though this was a food
that we had now been so long as it were confined to, (for it was the
only fresh provisions which we had tasted for near six months,) yet we
were far from being cloyed with it, or finding that the relish we had
of it at all diminished.

The animals w