BATTLE WITH ELECTRIC EELS.

The marshes and standing waters near Calabozo and the Orinoco, are filled with electric eels.

It is difficult to catch these eels with common fishing-nets, as they bury themselves in the mud.

The Indians fish them with horses and mules, which are driven into the water.

The noise occasioned by the stamping of the horses drives the eels out of the slime, and irritates them; they swim on the surface of the water, and press themselves against the belly of the mules and the horses.

A strange combat now begins; the Indians, provided with long thin bamboo canes, encircle the ditch; some climb the trees, whose branches extend horizontally over the water.

By wild screams and threats with their long canes, they prevent the horses coming ashore, and escaping.

The eels, terrified by the noise, defend themselves by the repeated discharge of their electric forces.

It seems for a time as if they would carry off the victory over the horses, for many of the latter succumb to the force of the invisible electric blows, which the eels give on the belly, the most sensitive part, and they sink below the surface overcome by the shocks.

If one, escaping from the shocks of the electric eel, reaches the land, it falls at every step, and sinks down on the sand faint and exhausted.

In the first five minutes, two horses were already drowned.

The eel, which is five feet long, presses against the belly of the horse, and discharges its electricity along its whole length, which stuns the abdomen, entrails, and heart of the horse.

The Indians maintained that if the horses were driven into the water of electric eels on two consecutive days, none would die the second day.

The eels now timidly approached the shore, where they were caught with little harpoons attached to long ropes.

If the ropes were perfectly dry, no electricity was felt while hauling out the fish, but it was communicated through the wet ropes.—Humboldt.