This is from Edward Wright Haile's book, `Jamestown Narratives,' which translates passages in Capt. John Smith's 1624 journal, `The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles.'

“ But our boat by reason of the ebb [tide] chancing to ground upon a many shoals lying in the entrances, we spied many fishes lurking in the reeds. Our captain, sporting himself to catch them by nailing them to the ground with his sword, set us all a-fishing in that manner; thus we took more in one hour than we could eat in a day. But it chanced our captain taking a fish from his sword, not knowing her condition, being much of the fashion of a thornback but with a long tail like a riding rod, whereon the middest is a most poisoned sting of two or three inches long, bearded like a saw on each side, which se stuck into the wrist of his arm near an inch and a half.

No blood or wound was seen, but a little blue spot. But the torment was instantly so extreme that in four hours had so swollen his hand, arm and shoulder....as we all with much sorrow [anticipated] his funeral and prepared his grave ... Yet it pleased God by a precious oil Doctor Russell at the first applied to it when he sounded it with a probe that ere night his tormenting pain was so well assuaged that he ate of the fish to his supper, which gave no less joy and content to us than ease to himeslf, for which we called the island Stingray Isle after the name of the fish...”