After treating of fish, a few observations should be made concerning the
various methods of fishing. In the city of Buenos-Ayres the Spanish
fishers enter the river Plata on horseback, near the shore, as far as it
is shallow. Two of them lay hold of each end of a rope, on which a net
is either spread, or closed again, filled with fish; in a few hours they
carry to shore numbers of noble fishes, which are immediately put to
sale. The Payaguas and Vilelas subsist chiefly upon fish. For fishing
they use a very small net, two ends of which they fasten before them, as
you would an apron, at the same time holding the two others with their
hands. Thus accoutred they jump from the shore into the water, and if
they spy any fish at the bottom, swim after it, catch it in the net,
which they place under its body, and carry it to shore. The Indian who
has remained beneath the water such a length of time that you believe
him inevitably drowned, you will, with astonishment, behold emerging at
a great distance, laden with booty. These men are more properly divers,
than fishers. If the transparency of the water, as in the river Salado,
renders the fish visible, the Paraguayrians pierce them with an arrow, a
spear, or an iron prong. The wood Indians catch fishes more usually by
craft and artifice than by arms. Sometimes by throwing in sticks, and
boughs of trees artfully entwined together, they dam up a river in such
a way that, though the fish can enter this enclosure, they are unable to
get out again. In other places they throw the plant yçipotingi, which
creeps up trees, or the leaves or fresh roots of the caraquata, well
pounded, into the water, which intoxicates the fishes to such a degree
that they may be caught with the hand as they float on the surface. They
often lash the water with the leaves of a certain tree which grows in
great abundance near the river Atingỹ, the juice of which is said to be
fatal to fishes. The Indians sometimes catch fishes with hooks made of
wood or reeds. The common, and indeed the only instrument for fishing
that I used, was an iron hook baited with a piece of fresh beef.