296 THE MANATEE. 



willing to bear its share in mutual defence or at- 

 tack. When one has been struck with a harpoon, 

 it has been noticed that the others tear the weapon 

 from the flesh ; and usually if the cubs be taken, 

 the mother is careless of her own preservation, 

 while if the mother be taken, the young follow her 

 to the shore, where they themselves are captured. 



The Manatus is not found in deep waters. It 

 frequents the shallow bays among the West Indian 

 Islands, and the sheltered creeks in the South Ame- 

 rican continent, particularly Guiana and the Brazils. 

 It was, in former times, especially at the mouths of 

 those vast rivers, the Oronoco and the Amazons, 

 that these cete delighted, and lived in innumerable 

 shoals. They also ascended many hundreds of miles, 

 frequented their tributaries, and peopled the fresh 

 water lakes connected with them ; and in these 

 places were sometimes observed to be frolicsome, 

 and to leap, as do the ordinary Whales, to great 

 heights out of the water. The historian Binet re- 

 marked, that in his time there were certain places 

 within ten or twelve leagues of Cayenne where they 

 so abounded, that a large boatful could be procured 

 in a day ; and that they sold in the market for about 

 threepence per pound. But the high estimation in 

 which their flesh was generally held, and the avidity 

 with which they were pursued, led ere long to a vast 

 thinning of their numbers, till finally they have been 

 almost exterminated in those countries which aia 

 thickly peopled. 



The mode in which thev were captured at Si 



