Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Lake Is In General Well Stocked With Fish; Though It Furnishes
Only Three Kinds, The Flesh Of Which Is Soft And Insipid, The Guavina,
The Vagre, And The Sardina.
The two last descend into the lake with
the streams that flow into it.
The guavina, of which I made a drawing
on the spot, is 20 inches long and 3.5 broad. It is perhaps a new
species of the genus erythrina of Gronovius. It has large silvery
scales edged with green. This fish is extremely voracious, and
destroys other kinds. The fishermen assured us that a small crocodile,
the bava,* which often approached us when we were bathing, contributes
also to the destruction of the fish. (* The bava, or bavilla, is very
common at Bordones, near Cumana. See volume 1. The name of bava,
baveuse, has misled M. Depons; he takes this reptile for a fish of our
seas, the Blennius pholis. Voyage a la Terre Ferme. The Blennius
pholis, smooth blenny, is called by the French baveuse (slaverer), in
Spanish, baba.) We never could succeed in procuring this reptile so as
to examine it closely: it generally attains only three or four feet in
length. It is said to be very harmless; its habits however, as well as
its form, much resemble those of the alligator (Crocodilus acutus). It
swims in such a manner as to show only the point of its snout, and the
extremity of its tail; and places itself at mid-day on the bare beach.
It is certainly neither a monitor (the real monitors living only in
the old continent,) nor the sauvegarde of Seba (Lacerta teguixin,)
which dives and does not swim.
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