“We’ll go down toward the inlet,” said Pecetti:  “there’s good fishing-ground and more breeze.”  So he set the sail, and we ran down the river, past the yachts, about a mile, where we came to anchor near a bluff covered with trees, in a deep channel.  Here we first caught blackfish or sea-bass, of small size, but plenty; also snappers, lively fish of the perch family, of a red color, and from a pound to two pounds in weight, which usually take a mullet bait, in the swift current near the surface.  Then a school of sheepshead came along, of which we got a dozen.  After these we found bass, of which we took eight, weighing from six to ten pounds each; also three fine groupers, the largest twelve pounds.  Pecetti caught a Tartar in the shape of a monstrous sting-ray, four feet across, with a tail three feet long armed with formidable spines.  This creature lives on the bottom, his food being chiefly mollusks and crustaceae, for the disposal of which he has a huge mouth with a pavement of flat enameled teeth.  He lies usually half buried in the sand, and is much dreaded by the fishermen, who are in danger of treading on him as they wade to cast their nets.  In that case he strikes quick blows with his whiplike tail, the jagged spines of which make very dangerous wounds, apt to produce lockjaw.

After much difficulty our boatman got the ray alongside the boat with his gaff-hook, and gave it a few deep cuts in the region of the heart with a large knife.  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.”

As the rays and sharks both belong to the order of placoids, it appears that the shark is not particular about preying on his kindred.

“Are sharks plenty here?” I inquired.

“Indeed they are!” said Pecetti:  “I wonder we have not had our lines cut by them.  I have caught half a dozen in an hour’s time right here.  I think I can show you one very quick.”  He went ashore and launched the ray’s carcass down the current.  It floated slowly away, but had not gone fifty yards when it was seized by a shark, which tugged and tore at it, till directly a second and a third arrived and struggled furiously for it, lashing the water into foam with their tails.  Presently more came up, till there were five or six of the monsters all fighting for the prey, which they soon devoured.  “There, you see how soon they smelt the blood.  What you think of sharks, now?”

“I think,” said I, “that this is not exactly the place to bathe in.”

The tide being now well on the ebb, the fish stopped biting, perhaps driven away by the sharks, and we sailed down to the inlet, where there is a long sandy beach fringed with mangroves:  behind these, low hillocks of sand covered with saw-palmetto extend across to the ocean, perhaps half a mile; and here is an expanse of sandy beach some hundreds of yards in width at low tide, hard and smooth, so that one could drive from St. Augustine to the south end of the peninsula were it not for the creeks and inlets.