The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-26

his sporting instincts of the slow, low snort, as, lying at the bottom or the
 shallow the manatee supports hlmselI
 by the extremity of his tall, raising
 only his snout above the surface at ln-
 tervals of two or three minutes, in or
 der to breathe?
 | It may not, however, be the snort
 that the sea lion hunter hears. 1T he
 be experienced in the sport, his trained
 ear detects the soft flashing, under the
 gently swishing water, of the forelimbs
 which are of great fexibility in swim 1 mings, and which, from the handilke | use that it makes of them, caused the
 early Spanish colonists to christen the
 creature the manah. From the shoul-
 der joint the manatee can move these
 forelimbs in all directions, the elbow and wrist permitting particularly free
 action. This striking or Its arms against the water is when the game is in midstream. almost the only clew to
 find" since, excepting the soft, seal like bleat of the COW when gamboling
 with her pups, the American manatee,
 unlike it's relative of the North With It's
 ''deep grand roar" is pretty nearly
 yoiceless, and, therefore, very difficult
 of locating by the sportsman, whose
 season. in the Leeward Islands, is from
 November to January inclusive, during
 which months the water Is generally tepid enough for the sport; for the crea- ture is fastidious about temperature, disliking extremes. Along the coasts of Cuba and aSn Domingo the north ers"-the cold winds blowing intermit- tently from the north from November to February-interfere occasionally, but these are seldom of more than forty- eight hours duration. In the Wind ward Islands and Florida sport can be had from December to February
 For a November hunt 1t is advisable to call the meet for, at least about 6 o'clock. At that hour the sun is not overpowering, though strong enough to dull the scent of the sea Hon. which has, however, acute hearing, and al- though it's hold has been detected by the sportsman as he came Shoreward, by the time that the boats, their oar locks swathed in strips Of palm leaf to muffle the click of the oars, have | pushed off-being, of course, between | the game and the sea--the manatee has | generally betaken itself to his feeding | ground Sea lions feed in families and | upon aquatics plants chiefly, pushing | the food toward the mouth with one or | both hands. From these characteristics | arose the fable--favored by | that doyen of chivalry Ponce de Leon, | who did some manatee hunting when | on his never to be forgotten quest for | the fountain of youth-that the mana | tee carries its young in it's arms. If | the chronicles are to be relied on, Ponce seems to have been deterred from mak- ing a big haul only by consideration for | the human qualities he attributed to the object of his sport. Nowadays the manatee hunter does not find things so easy. It is not that, on escaping from his hold, the game has probably much his pursuers, for he Is ex- tremely inactive of habit; the difficulty lies in hitting upon the particular one of the often alligator infested creeks off these interminably indented Antillano rivers--black as night, some of them, beneath their groined roofs of cedar and mango and caoba--in which he has sought refuge under