168 CHELONIANS. 



and palm-leaves. Great precautions are obliged to be taken to 

 avoid disturbing the vigilant Turtles, which, previous to crawling 

 ashore to lay, assemble in great shoals off the sand-bank. The 

 men during this time take care not to show themselves, and they 

 warn off any fisherman who attempts to pass near the place ; for 

 the passage of a boat, or the sight of a man, or a fire on the sand- 

 bank, would prevent their laying their eggs that night, and if 

 repeated, they would forsake the praia for some quieter place." 



After a night spent under a temporary shed rapidly constructed 

 for himself and companion, Mr. Bates rose from his hammock 

 shivering with cold. 



" Cardoza and the men were already watching the Turtles on a 

 stage erected on a tall tree fifty feet high ; from this watch-tower 

 they are enabled to ascertain the place and date of successive 

 deposits of eggs, and thus guide the commandant in fixing the 

 time for his general invitation to the Ega people. The Turtles lay 

 their eggs during the night, leaving the water in vast crowds 

 when all around is quiet, when they crawl to the central and 

 highest part of the praia. The hours between midnight and dawn 

 are those when the Turtles excavate, with their broad, webbed \ 

 paws, deep holes in the fine sand, the animal in each case making 

 a pit about three feet deep ; in this pit it lays its eggs, about a 

 hundred and twenty in number, covering them over with sand ; 

 then a second deposit is placed on the top of the first, and so on 

 until the pit is full." This goes on for about fourteen days. 

 " When all have done, the area, or taboliero, over which they 

 have been digging is only distinguished from the rest of the 

 praia by signs of the sand having been a little disturbed. 



" On rising I went to join my friends," he continues, " and few 

 recollections of my Amazonian rambles are more vivid and agree- 

 able than that of my walk over the white sea of sand on this 

 cool morning. The sky was cloudless ; the just-risen sun was 

 hid behind the dense woods on Shimuni, but the long line of 

 forest to the west on Baria, with its plumy decorations of palms, 

 was lighted up with his yellow horizontal rays. A faint chorus * 

 of singing-birds reached the ears from across the water, and flocb? 

 of Grulls and Plovers were calling plaintively over the sw^ling 

 banks of the praia. Tracks of stray Turtles were visible on the 



