264 Life of Auduhon, 



panied by Dr. Benjamin Strobel, to inquire about prices, 

 when to my surprise I found 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 hundred pounds, for little 

 more money than another of only thirty pounds. 



" While I gazed on the turtle 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 dispos- 

 ing 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 the flesh 

 could not keep much longer than a day, and on that ac- 

 count I bought eight or ten small ones, which ' my friends' 

 really relished exceedingly, and w^hich 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 or 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. These nets are formed of very large meshes, into 

 which the turtles partially get entangled. Others har- 

 poon them in the usual manner ; but in my estimation, no 

 method is equal to that employed by Mr. Egan, the pilot, 

 of Indian Isle. 



" That extraordinary turtler had an iron instrument 

 which he called a *peg,' and which at each end had a 

 point, not unlike what nailmakers call a bradj it being 



