The sand flats were very interesting. We dug up a number of Dentaliums of two species, the first we had found. These animals, which look like slender curved teeth, belong to a small class of mollusks, little known popularly, called “tooth shells.”
On the shallow bottom, attached to very small stones, we found little anemones of three types. There were also sand anemones,32 in long filthy-looking gray cases when they were dug out. But when they were imbedded in the bottom and expanded, they looked like lovely red and purple flowers. A great number of small black cucumbers of a type we had not taken crawled on the bottom, as well as one large pepper-and-salt cucumber. We found many heart-urchins, two species of the ordinary ophiurans (brittle-stars), and one burrowing ophiuran. Sponges and tunicates were fastened to the insecure footing of very small stones, but since there is probably very little churning of water on the tide flats, they were safe enough. There were flat worms of several species; stinging worms, peanut worms, echiuroid worms, and what in the collecting notes are listed rather tiredly as “worms.” We took one specimen of the sea-whip, a rather spectacular colony of animals looking exactly like a long white whip. The lower portion is a horny stalk and the upper part consists of zooids carrying on their own life processes but connected by a series of canals which unite their body cavities with the main stalk.
As the tide came up we moved upward in the intertidal toward the mangrove trees, and the foul smell of them reached us. They were in bloom, and the sharp sweet smell of their flowers, combined with the filthy odor of the mud about their roots, was sickening. But they are fascinating to look into. Huge hermit crabs seem to live among their stilted roots; the black mud, product of the root masses, swarms as a meeting place for land and sea animals. Flies and insects in great numbers crawl and buzz about the mud, and the scavenging hermit crabs steal secretly in and out and even climb into the high roots.
We suppose it is the combination of foul odor and the impenetrable quality of the mangrove roots which gives one a feeling of dislike for these salt-water-eating bushes. We sat quietly and watched the moving life in the forests of the roots, and it seemed to us that there was stealthy murder everywhere. On the surf-swept rocks it was a fierce and hungry and joyous killing, committed with energy and ferocity. But here it was like stalking, quiet murder. The roots gave off clicking sounds, and the odor was disgusting. We felt that we were watching something horrible. No one likes the mangroves. Raúl said that in La Paz no one loved them at all.
On the level flats the tide covers the area very quickly. We waded out to a wrecked boat lying turned over on the sand, and took a number of barnacles from the rotten wood and even from the rusted engine. It was a good rich collecting day, and it had been a curiously emotional day beginning with the church. Sometimes one has a feeling of fullness, of warm wholeness, wherein every sight and object and odor and experience seems to key into a gigantic whole. That day even the mangrove was part of it. Perhaps among primitive peoples the human sacrifice has the same effect of creating a wholeness of sense and emotion—the good and bad, beautiful, ugly, and cruel all welded into one thing. Perhaps a whole man needs this balance. And we had been as excited at finding the Dentaliums as though they had been nuggets of gold.
Raúl had a La Paz harpoon in his canoe, and we bought it from him, hoping to bring it home. It was a shaft of iron with a ring on one end for the line and a point and hinged barb at the other. A little circle of cord holds the barb against the shaft until the friction of the flesh of the victim pushes the cord free and allows the barb to open out inside the flesh. We wanted to keep this harpoon, but we lost it in a manta ray later. At this reading, there are many manta rays in the Gulf cruising about with our harpoons in their hides.
We also wanted one of the Nayarit canoes to take back, for they are light and of shallow draft, ideal for collecting in the lagoons and seaworthy even in rough water. But no one would sell a canoe. They came from too far away and were too well loved. Some very old ones were solid with braces and patches.
It was dusk when we came back to the Western Flyer, and the deck was filled with waiting little boys holding mashed and mangled specimens of all kinds. We bought what we needed and then we bought a lot of things we didn’t need. The boys had waited a long time for us, under the stern eye of our military man. And it was interesting to see how our soldier loved the ragged little boys of La Paz. When they got out of hand or ran too fast over the deck, he cautioned them, but there was none of the bluster of the policeman. And had we not been just to the little boys, he would have joined them; for they were his people and our great wealth would not have deflected him from them. He wore his automatic, but it was only a badge with no show of force about it, and when he entered the galley or sat down with us he removed the gun belt and hung it up. We liked the tone of voice he used on the boys. It had dignity and authority but no bullying quality, and the boys of the town seemed to respect him without fearing him.
Once when a little boy practiced the most ancient trick in the list of boy skulduggery-that of removing a specimen and selling it again—the soldier spoke to him shortly with contempt, and that boy lost his standing and even his friends.
One boy had, on a light harpoon, a fish which looked something like the puffers—a gray and black fish with a large flat head. When we wished to buy it he refused, saying that a man had commissioned him to get this fish and he was to receive ten centavos for it because the man wanted to poison a cat. This was the botete, and our first experience with it. It is thought in La Paz that the poison concentrates in the liver and this part is used for poisoning small animals and even flies. We did not make this test, but we found botete everywhere in the warm shallow waters of the Gulf. Probably he is the most prevalent fish of all in lagoons and eel-grass flats. He lies on the bottom, and his marking makes him nearly invisible. Sometimes he lies in a small cleared place in eel-grass or in a slight depression on the silt bottom which indicates, but does not prove, that he has a fairly permanent resting-place to which he returns. When one is wading in the shallows, botete lies quiet until he is nearly stepped on before he streaks away, drawing a cloud of disturbed mud after him.
In the press of collecting and preserving, we neglected to dissect the stomach of this fish, so we do not know what he eats.
The literature on botete is scattered and hard to come by. Members of his genus, having his poisonous qualities, are distributed all over the world where there are shallows of warm water. Since this fish is very dangerous to eat and is so widely found, it is curious that so little has been written about it. Eating him almost invariably causes death in agony. If he were rare, it would be understandable why he has been so little discussed. But more has been written about some of the seldom-seen fishes of the great depths than of this deadly little botete. We were fascinated with him and took a number of specimens. Following are some of the few reports available on his nature and misdemeanors. We still do not know whether he kills flies.
From Herre33 we learn that “In at least two or three of the sub-orders the flesh nearly always is not only thin, hard, often bitter and usually unpalatable, but also contains poisonous alkaloids. These produce the disease known as ciguatera, in which the nervous system is attacked and violent gastric disturbances, paralysis, and death may follow.”
On page 423 he discusses the Balistidae, or trigger-fish such as the Gulf puerco: “Although seen in fish markets throughout the Orient, none of the Balistidae are much used as human food. In some localities of the Philippines, those of moderate size are eaten, but their sale here should be forbidden as their flesh is always more or less poisonous. In such places as Cuba and Mauritius they are not allowed in the markets as they are known to cause ciguatera.
“Francis Day says (Fishes of India, 1878, p. 686): ‘Dr. Meunier, at Mauritius, considers that the poisonous flesh acts primarily on the nervous tissue of the stomach, causing violent spasms of that organ and, shortly afterwards, of all the muscles of the body. The frame becomes wra
cked with spasms, the tongue thickened, the eye fixed, the breathing laborious, and the patient expires in a paroxysm of extreme suffering. The first remedy to be given is a strong emetic, and subsequently oils and demulcents to allay irritability.’
“In his account of the backboned animals of Abyssinia Rüppel states that Balistes flavomarginatus is very common in the Red Sea at Djetta, where it is often brought to market, although only pilgrims who do not know the quality of the flesh will buy it. He goes on to say that as a whole the Balistidae not only have a bad taste, but also are unwholesome as food.”
Referring to the Tetraodontidae, page 479, Herre uses the name batete, or botete, as used in most Philippine languages. “This dangerous group of fishes,” he says, “is widely distributed in warm seas all over the world and is common throughout the Philippines. Although most people are more or less aware of the poisonous properties of the flesh, it is eaten in practically every Philippine fishing village and not a year goes by without several deaths from this cause.
“A Japanese investigator (I have been unable to obtain a copy of his paper, which appeared in Archiv für Pathologie und Pharmacologie) has studied carefully the alkaloid present in the flesh of the Tetraodontidae and finds it to be very near to muscarine, the active poisonous principle of Amanita muscaria and other fungi. It is a tasteless, odorless, and very poisonous crystalline alkaloid.”
He goes on to state that the natives consider the gall-bladder, the milt, and the eggs to be particularly poisonous. But in La Paz it was the liver which was thought to be the most poisonous part. Only the liver was used to poison animals and flies, although this might be because the liver was more attractive as bait than other portions.
Herre continues on page 488 concerning Tetraodon: “The Medical Journal of Australia under the date of December 1, 1923, tells of two Malays who ate of a species of Tetraodon although warned of the danger. They ate at noon with no serious effects, but on eating some for supper they were taken violently ill, one dying in an hour, the other about three hours later.” Of the Diodontidae, page 503 (the group to which the puffer fish belong): “The fishes of this family have a well-deserved reputation for being poisonous and their flesh should never be eaten.”
Botete is sluggish, fairly slow, unarmored, and not very clever at either concealment, escape, or attack. It is amusing but valueless to speculate anthropomorphically in the chicken-egg manner regarding the relationship between his habits and his poison. Did he develop poison in his flesh as a protection in lieu of speed and cleverness, or being poisonous and quite unattractive, was he able to “let himself go,” to abandon speed and cleverness? The protected human soon loses his power of defense and attack. Perhaps botete, needing neither brains nor tricks nor techniques to protect himself except from a man who wants to poison a cat, has become a frump.
In the evening Tiny returned to the Western Flyer, having collected some specimens of Phthirius pubis, but since he made no notes in the field, he was unable or unwilling to designate the exact collecting station. His items seemed to have no unusual qualities but to be members of the common species so widely distributed throughout the world.
We were to sail in the early morning, and that night we walked a little in the dim-lighted streets of La Paz. And we wondered why so much of the Gulf was familiar to us, why this town had a “home” feeling. We had never seen a town which even looked like La Paz, and yet coming to it was like returning rather than visiting. Some quality there is in the whole Gulf that trips a trigger of recognition so that in fantastic and exotic scenery one finds oneself nodding and saying inwardly, “Yes, I know.” And on the shore the wild doves mourn in the evening and then there comes a pang, some kind of emotional jar, and a longing. And if one followed his whispering impulse he would walk away slowly into the thorny brush following the call of the doves. Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to re-create a dream. This is by no means a sentimental thing, it has little to do with beauty or even conscious liking. But the Gulf does draw one, and we have talked to rich men who own boats, who can go where they will. Regularly they find themselves sucked into the Gulf. And since we have returned, there is always in the backs of our minds the positive drive to go back again. If it were lush and rich, one could understand the pull, but it is fierce and hostile and sullen. The stone mountains pile up to the sky and there is little fresh water. But we know we must go back if we live, and we don’t know why.
Late at night we sat on the deck. They were pumping water out of the hold of the trading boat, preparing her to float and flounder away to Guaymas for more merchandise. But La Paz was asleep; not a soul moved in the streets. The tide turned and swung us around, and in the channel the ebbing tide whispered against our hull and we heard the dogs of La Paz barking in the night.
13
MARCH 23
We sailed in the morning. The mustached old pilot came aboard and steered us out, then bowed deeply and stepped into the launch which had followed us. The sea was calm and very blue, almost black-blue, as we turned northward along the coast. We wished to stop near San José Island as our next collecting station. It was good to be under way again and good to be out from under the steady eyes of those ubiquitous little boys who waited interminably for us to do something amusing.
In mid-afternoon we came to anchorage at Amortajada Bay on the southwest tip of San José Island. A small dark islet had caught our attention as we came in. For although the day was bright this islet, called Cayo on the map, looked black and mysterious. We had a feeling that something strange and dark had happened there or that it was the ruined work of men’s hands. Cayo is only a quarter of a mile long and a hundred yards wide. Its northern end is a spur and its southern end a flat plateau about forty feet high. Even in the distance it had a quality which we call “burned.” One knows there will be few animals on a “burned” coast; that animals will not like it, will not be successful there. Even the algae will be like lost colonists. Whether or not this is the result of a deadly chemistry we cannot say. But we can say that it is possible, after long collecting, to recognize a shore which is “burned” even if it is so far away that details cannot be seen.
Cayo lay about a mile and a half from our anchorage and seemed to blacken even the air around it. This was the first time that the Sea-Cow could have been of great service to us. It was for just such occasions that we had bought it. We were kind to it that day—selfishly of course. We said nice things about it and put it tenderly on the stern of the skiff, pretending to ourselves that we expected it to run, that we didn’t dream it would not run. But it would not. We rowed the boat—and the Sea-Cow—to Cayo Islet. There is so much that is strange about this islet that we will set much of it down. It is nearly all questions, but perhaps someone reading this may know the answers and tell us. There is no landing place; all approaches are strewn with large sea-rounded boulders which even in fairly still water would beat the bottom out of a boat. On its easterly side, the one we approached, a cliff rises in back of a rocky beach and there are a number of shallow caves in the cliffside. Set in the great boulders in the intertidal zone there are large iron rings and lengths of big chain, but so rusted and disintegrated that they came off in our hands. Also, set in the cliff six to eight feet above the beach, are other iron rings with loops eight inches in diameter. They look very old, but the damp air of the Gulf and the rapid oxidation caused by it make it impossible to say exactly how old they are. In the shallow caves in the cliff there were evidences of many fires’ having been built, and piled about the fireplaces, some old and some fresh, were not only thousands of clam-shells but turtle-shells also, as though these animals had been brought here to be smoked. A heap of fairly fresh diced turtle-meat lay beside one of the fireplaces. The mysterious quality of all this lies here. There are no clams in this immediate vicinity and turtles do not greatly abound. There is no wood whatever on the island with which to build fires; it would have to be brought here. There is no water whatever. And once arrived, there is
no anchorage. Why people would bring clams and turtles and wood and water to an islet where there was no protection we do not know. A mile and a half away they could have beached easily and have found both wood and water. It is a riddle we cannot answer, just as we can think of no reason for the big iron rings. They could not have been for fastening a big boat to, since there is no safe water for a boat to lie in and no cove protection from wind and storm. We are very curious about this. We climbed the cliff by a trail that was well beaten in a crevice and on the flat top found a sparse growth of brown grass and some cactus. Nothing more. On the southernmost end of the cliff sat one large black crow who shrieked at us with dislike, and when we approached flew off and disappeared in the direction of San José Island.
The cliffs were light buff in color, and the grass light brown. It is impossible to say why distance made Cayo look black. Boulders and fixed stones of the reef were of a reddish igneous rock and the island, like the whole region, was volcanic in origin.
Collecting on the rocks we found, as we knew we would, a sparse and unhappy fauna. The animals were very small. Heliaster, the sun-star of which there were a few, was small and pale in color. There were anemones, a few sea-cucumbers, and a few sea-rabbits. The one animal which seemed to like Cayo was Sally Lightfoot. These beautiful crabs crawled on the rocks and dominated the life of the region. We took a few Aletes (worm-like snails) and some serpulid worms, two or three types of snails, and a few isopods and beach-hoppers.
The tide came up and endangered our boat, which we had balanced on top of a boulder, and we rowed back toward the Western Flyer, one of us in the stern pulling with a quiet fury on the starting rope of the Sea-Cow. We wished we had left it dangling by its propeller on one of the cliff rings, and its evil and mysterious magneto would have liked that too.
The Log from the Sea of Cortez Page 15
