THE TURTLES OF SAND-KEY ISLAND. 215 



delicate that it is as tender as that of a fowl. The 

 way of taking turtles which I have described is not 

 the only one practised on the coasts of the Floridas. 

 The turtle-fishers lay enormous nets with large 

 meshes at the mouths of the rivers, and catch the 

 turtles in great quantities. Others use the harpoon, 

 but the turtles have such a power of locomotion that 

 they tell a story of a Caribee Indian whose canoe was 

 dragged for two nights and a day by a harpooned 

 turtle, and the poor Indian not having a knife, was 

 unable to cut the cord which fastened him to the 

 turtle.* 



Downing himself had invented an apparatus for 

 taking turtles in the daytime. It was an iron imple- 

 ment, which he called the pin, armed at either end 

 with a point like a headless nail, something like 

 what net-makers use, quadrangular, flat at the sides, 

 and shaped something like the beak of a pick. To 

 the centre of this instrument, by means of a hole 

 bored through the pin, he fastened a fine though 

 extremely strong snood of wire about a hundred 

 yards long ; the rest of the line was of strong cord, 

 carefully coiled and stowed away in a convenient 

 part of the boat. One end of the pin fitted into an 

 iron socket which confined it, in such a manner as to 

 be readily set free, to a long wooden shaft, whilst the 

 carapace of the turtle could be transfixed by the 



* Very good, M. Revoil ; but he might have untied it. — Tkans. 



