378 AUDUBON 



chanced to have need to purchase some Turtles, to feed 

 my friends on board " The Lady of the Green Mantle " — 

 not my friends her gallant officers, or the brave tars who 

 formed her crew, for all of them had already been satiated 

 with Turtle soup, but my friends the Herons, of which 

 I had a goodly number alive in coops, intending to carry 

 them to John Bachman of Charleston, and other persons 

 for whom I ever feel a sincere regard. So I went to a 

 " crawl " accompanied by Dr. Benjamin Strobel, to in- 

 quire about prices, when, to my surprise, I found that 

 the smaller the Turtles above ten-pounds weight, the 

 dearer they were, and that I could have purchased one of 

 the Logger-head kind that weighed more than seven hun- 

 dred pounds, for little more money than another of only 

 thirty pounds. While I gazed on the large one, I thought 

 of the soups the contents of its shell would have furnished 

 for a " Lord Mayor's dinner," of the numerous eggs which 

 its swollen body contained, and of the curious carriage 

 which might be made of its shell — a car in which Venus 

 herself might sail over the Caribbean Sea, provided her 

 tender Doves lent their aid in drawing the divinity, and 

 provided no shark or hurricane came to upset it. The 

 turtler assured me that although the "great monster" 

 was, in fact, better meat than any other of a less size, 

 there was no disposing of it, unless, indeed, it had been 

 in his power to have sent it to some very distant market. 

 I would willingly have purchased it, but I knew that if 

 killed, its flesh could not keep much longer than a day, 

 and on that account I bought eight or ten small ones, 

 which " my friends " really relished exceedingly, and 

 which served to support them for a long time. 



Turtles, such as I have spoken of, are caught in various 

 ways on the coasts of the Floridas, or in estuaries and 

 rivers. Some turtlers are in the habit of setting great 

 nets across the entrance of streams, so as to answer the 

 purpose either at the flow or at the ebb of the waters. 



