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.  The black and white rock cod is also regarded with aversion by the untutored settlers of the small coast settlements, yet these fish are sold in Sydney, like the schnapper, at prohibitive prices.

In conclusion, let me advise any one who is contemplating a visit to Australia, and means to devote any of his time to either river or sea fishing, to take his rods with him; all the rest of his tackle he can buy as cheap in the colonies as he can in England.  Rods are but little used in salt-water fishing in Australia, and are rather expensive.  Those who do use a rod are usually satisfied with a bamboo—­a very good rod it makes, too, although inconvenient to carry when travelling—­but the generality of people use hand lines.  And the visitor must not be persuaded that he can always get good fishing without going some distance from Sydney or Melbourne.  That there is some excellent sport to be obtained in Port Jackson in summer is true, but it is lacking in a very essential thing—­the quietude that is dear to the heart of every true fisherman.

Denison Gets Another Ship

Owing to reduced circumstances, and a growing hatred of the hardships of the sea, young Tom Denison (ex-supercargo of the South Sea Island trading schooner Palestine) had sailed from Sydney to undertake the management of an alleged duck-farm in North Queensland.  The ducks, and the vast area of desolation in which they suffered a brief existence, were the property of a Cooktown bank, the manager of which was Denison’s brother.  He was a kind-hearted man, who wanted to help Tom along in the world, and, therefore, was grieved when at the end of three weeks the latter came into Cooktown humping his swag, smoking a clay pipe, and looking exceedingly tired, dirty, and disreputable generally.  However, all might have gone well even then had not Mrs. Aubrey Denison, the brother’s wife, unduly interfered and lectured Tom on his “idle and dissolute life,” as she called it, and made withering remarks about the low tastes of sailors other than captains of mail steamers or officers in the Navy.  Tom, who intended to borrow L10 from his brother to pay his passage back to Sydney to look for a ship, bore it all in silence, and then said that he should like to give up the sea and become a missionary in the South Seas, where he was “well acquainted with the natives.”