DEER, WILD BOAR, AND MANY SPECIES OF GAME BIRDS FOUND IN
ABUNDANCE--WATERS TEEM WITH FISH.
While Cuba offers such a haven to the invalid, it is a paradise to the
sportsman, wild game and fish of all kinds being abundant.
Parties of gentlemen on horseback, with their pack of hounds, hunt the
fleet-footed deer. It is a common thing for a small party to kill eight
or ten deer in a day.
The wild boar is plentiful, and sometimes, if cornered, dangerous,
especially the old master of the herd, called "un solitario," which
will tear a dog to pieces or make a green hunter climb a tree; but
a Cuban easily kills him with a machete. The island boar sometimes
weighs 200 or 300 pounds and has huge tusks, often five or six inches
in length. The meat of the female is much relished by the natives.
Wild dogs and cats, wild cattle, horses, and jackasses abound. But
the jutia, peculiar only to Cuba, which looks like a cross between a
squirrel with a rat's tail and a rabbit, and which lives in the trees
and feeds on nuts and leaves, is the great delight of the Cuban.
Fowls are in great numbers. Wild guinea hens and turkeys are found in
flocks of from 25 to 100. The whistle of the quail and the flutter
of the perdiz, or pheasant, are heard on all sides in the rural and
mountain regions. Ducks in abundance come over from Florida in the
winter and return with the spring. Wild pigeons, with their white tops
and bodies of blue, larger somewhat than the domestic bird, offer, in
hunting, the greatest sport to gentlemen who will be restrained within
reason. In the early morning the pigeons generally go to feed on the
mangle berries when ripe, and which grow by the sea or near some swampy
place. I have known a party of three persons to kill 1,500 of the
pigeons within a few hours. Robiches, tojosas, and guanaros are found
in the thick woods.
Mockingbirds and blue-birds, orioles, turpials, negritos, parrots, and
a thousand kinds of songsters and birds of brilliant plumage flit from
tree to tree.
The naturalist Poey says there are 641 distinct species of fish in
the Cuban waters. Among those that delight the sportsman are the red
snapper, lista, manta, gallego, cubera, surela, and garfish. The
sierra, which weighs from forty to sixty pounds, is extremely game,
as is the ronco, so called because it snores when brought out of the
water. For heavy sport, fishing for sharks, which are good for nothing,
or the gusa, which weighs from 400 to 600 pounds and is excellent
eating, offers abundant exercise. It is a daily occurrence to see
schools of fish numbering from hundreds to many thousands, each fish
weighing from one to four pounds, swimming around the bays and harbors
waiting for a bait. Any American who enjoys good fishing can find his
fondest dreams more than satisfied in Cuba.
Delicious shrimps, crabs, lobsters, oysters, and clams abound. The
lobsters have no claws and weigh from two to eight pounds. They are
caught at night in shallow places along the sandy beach, a torch,
harpoon, and net being the necessary outfit. Some of the rivers abound
in alligators, but few hunt them.--_Field and Stream._
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.
CHICAGO:
A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.]