Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1879-03-14
s@a not knOR.

.I~~/ eQid not know
~-- 4Sek until had
so - 41es to the north of NV
comrades. If l had not met with some
game, following the shadows, perhaps,
Is 1 had, been deing,vI might hsvs
come back in the neighborhood of
whereof Started from There was ss{orn1{fsl
game, howeFervAt aAout eleFen.o,cIock
saw large black bear looking rioht
at me. threW5h1y9 eyes up S sIIsII
tree that stood near, and thouCbt
U missed the bear, and he os5ne Tor
me- would make tracks up ths R+Ro
Tree. had been TAUGHT to bAl;aEa,f s.lS .llo
never was more sef Of doubt. Ancient
,taf thew can ~ lone to long stories,
khan three might to dress up and
maqnLL LSlano that !. told of sharks that
have Tsac.a 81 -SsEy, thirty-fve, forty,
and even fifty feet. We may take such
measurements for what they are worth.
The white shark is the most dangerous
Of its kind, is seldom more than ten or
twelve feet from head to tail. No
shark that ever yet SWAN could bite
man in two or cut of his leg. The
teeth of the shark, no doubt, are very
terrible. They are arranged row be-
hind row, and the muscles of its jaws
are of enormous strength. But they
are fitted for rending and lacerating
rather than for cutting or severing.
The action is not that of the shears,
but rather of the harrow or searifer.
A shark of ten feet, or even eight, will
seize man by the thigh and strip the
flesh from off his leg down to the heel,
or, with firm grasp of the limb and
q powerful twist of its body in the
water, it may possibly tear the leg out
Of the socket. Such an injury, Of
course, is as instantly fatal as If the
assailant had cut its victim in half.
There is, indeed, no need to exag-
gerate the size of the shark; for q
small shark, if hungry, is practically
as dangerous as large one. Any old
fisherman knows that dogfsh will at
tack q cod or ling twice its size, and
with five or six well-directed bites tear
it to pieces. 1t is thus that q shark
deals with man. Following him, and
descending below him, it rolls over and
mounting, with its jaws uppermost,
inficts a wound sufficiently dreadful
to cause instant collapse. It is the
old story of the wolf attacking the 0ser
or the buffalo. Indeed, the highly.
colored stories among sailors as ia the
size, strength and voracity of the shark,
do much to create 8 dangerous sense of
security. When a ship is swinging at
anchor in the tropics, the hands will
think nothing of venturing overheard
for 2 plunge, If such few sharks as are
seen about are little if at AL bigger
than men; or late at night, they viii
drop noiselessly over the side and swim
ashore. Their simple faith is that un-
less shark be large enough to almost
swallow q man whole, he will not at
tack him; while it is also part of the
forecastle creed that the shark sleeps
at night. Many an English sailor has
paid the penalty of his life for rashness
of this kind; and the ignorance current
among sailors of the shark and its hah-
its is, when we remember how the
brute swarms in tropical seas, some
thing almost astonishing. The old
story of the pilot fish which always ac-
company the shark and guide him to
his prey, is still gravely repeated, and
as gravely believed. 1t is also an arti-
Gle OF nautical faith that the shark
knows when there is dying man on
board ship, and will follow the vessel
for miles, guided by some sinister and
almost demOniacal instinct. As a mat
ter Of fact, there are always pilot-fsh to
be seen In the wake Of a vessel, only
that they are not noticed unless a shark
in their company calls attention to
them; while shark will, for reasons of
his own, invariably follow a vessel,
whether there be a sick man on board
or not.-Once a Week.