Fit as Fiddles and as Hard as Nails

[12th October 1916] But on one occasion I saw the skin of an enormous monster that surpassed anything I had ever imagined. Its head was huge and massive; it could easily take a man’s thigh into its mouth; its length was 6 feet 4 inches; its weight 212 lbs.* I never saw a fresh-water fish in any river that could compare with this giant. An Arab had speared it in a shallow lake; the wonder was how he had ever succeeded in lifting the massive fish, heavier than a big man, into his crazy little boat. An Armenian prisoner, who also saw the fish, declared that it was nothing extraordinary; that at Mosul the salmon reached such a size that their heads were as large as a big roll of bedding, and the only method of transporting one was to slit it up the belly from head to tail and heave /
*215 lbs. B.N.H.S.