Yorke the Adventurer and Other Stories Author:Louis Becke General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1901 Original Publisher: T.F. Unwin Subjects: Adventure stories, Australian Sea stories, Australian Pacific Area Oceania Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Fiction / Short Stories History / General History / Oceania Literary Crit... more »icism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The Black Bream of Australia Next to the lordly and brilliant-hued schnapper, the big black bream of the deep harbour waters of the east coast of Australia is the finest fish of the bream species that have ever been caught. Thirty years ago, in the hundreds of bays which indent the shores of Sydney harbour, and along the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers, they were very plentiful and of great size ; now, one over 3 Ibs. is seldom caught, for the greedy and dirty Italian and Greek fishermen who infest the harbour with their fine-meshed nets have practically exterminated them. In other harbours of New South Wales, however -- notably Jervis and Twofold Bays -- these handsome fish are still plentiful, and there I have caught them winter and summer, during the day under a hot and blazing sun, and on dark, calm nights. In shape the black bream is exactly as his brighter- hued brother, but his scales are of a dark colour, like partially tarnished silver ; he is broader and heavier about the head and shoulders, and he swims in a more leisurely, though equally cautious, manner, always bringing-to the instant anything unusual attracts his attention. Then, with gently undulating tail and steady eye, he regards the object before him, or watches a shadow above with the keenest scrutiny. If it is a small, dead fish...« less