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Bradantia Directory 04
We went down all the time on troubled waters, with rocky banks and innumerable obstacles all the way. We went through another terrible and most intricate rapid--the Labyrinth--and passed through a channel only 40 m. wide between high rocky banks. Then, after that, for 9,500 m. we had fair and smooth navigation, with a range of flat-topped hills 300 ft. high, extending from W.S.W. to E.N.E., in front of us to the north-west. Here there was a regular maze of channels, all more or less bad. We did not follow the principal one, which was strewn with rocks, but a smaller one, at the end of which, unfortunately, we found a barrier of rocks which we could not surmount. We had all the trouble of dragging the canoe back up the rapid until we could turn her round into another channel.
Which of us cannot look back in youth to the mysteries of the stickleback fisheries? Captains courageous, we sailed forth with bent pin and piece of thread, to woo the wily quarry with half an inch of chopped earthworm. For stickleback abound in every running stream and pond in England. They are beautiful little creatures, too, when you come to examine them, great favorites in the fresh-water aquarium; the male in particular is exquisitely colored, his hues growing brighter and his sheen more conspicuous at the pairing season. There are many species of sticklebacks--in England we have three very different kinds--but all are alike in one point which gives them their common name, that is to say, in their aggressive and protective prickliness. They are armed against all comers. The dorsal fin is partly replaced in the whole family by strong spines or "stickles," which differ in number in the different species. One of our English sorts is a lover of salt water: he lives in the sea, especially off the Cornish coast, and has fifteen stickles or spines; on which account he is commonly known as the Fifteen-spined Stickleback; our other two sorts belong to fresher waters, and are known as the Ten-spined and the Three-spined respectively.
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