280 LEAVES PROM THE 



ties, live on the flesh of turtles only for three or four 

 months, without bread, without cassava — with nothing, 

 in short, but the fat and lean of those animals; and he 

 declares that, whatever maladies these men may have when 

 they set out upon this expedition, even if they should be af- 

 fected with the most loathsome, they return perfectly cured. 

 He describes at some length the methods of capture. 

 The first is, to watch them when they go to lay their 

 eggs* in the sand, or Avhen they come to reconnoitre ; and 

 he says, that if their traces are observed on the sand, and 

 the observer go to the same place on the seventeenth day 

 afterwards, he will infallibly find the turtle come for the 

 purpose of depositing her burden. She is then turned 

 on her back, and being unable to regain her usual posi- 

 tion, is safe. But though a green turtle thus turned is 

 secure, because her carapace is comparatively flat, a 

 hawks-bill left in such a posture is no more safe than a 

 Galapagos tortoise when laid on its back, because the cara- 

 pace of the hawks-bill is more convex, and the animal 

 itself more active ; the operator, therefore, after turning the 

 turtle, places great stones round it, so as to counteract its 

 efforts to regain its natural posture, or, as the hawks-bill 

 is only sought for its shell, the flesh being comparatively 

 worthless, it is killed on the spot. 



The worthy father gives a hint to turtle-turners to beware 

 of their jaws, for they bite, particularly the hawks-bill 

 (caret), furiously ; and if they cannot take out the piece, 

 will not let go while they have life. The turtle-turners, 

 therefore, carry a little bludgeon with them, with which 

 they give the patient a rap on the head before they pro- 

 ceed to turn it. 



* According to Labat, a turtle of ordinary size lays as many as 

 two hundred and fifty eggs, of the size of tennis-balls, and as 

 round. The white, he says, never hardens, however long it may 

 be submitted to cookery, but the yolk becomes hard, like that of 

 the common fowl. 



