190 



PRODUCE OF TIIE ISLAND. 



sionado places marks to indicate the point where each tribe 

 should stop in its labours. We were surprised to hear this 

 * harvest of eggs ' estimated like the produce of a well- 

 cultivated field. An area accurately measured of one hun- 

 dred and twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide, has been 

 known to yield one hundred jars of oil, valued at about 

 forty pounds sterling. The Indians remove the earth 

 with their hands ; they place the eggs they have collected 

 in small baskets, carry them to their encampment, and 

 throw them into long troughs of wood filled with water. 

 In these troughs the eggs, broken and stirred with shovels, 

 remain exposed to the sun till the oily part, which swims on 

 the surface, has time to inspissate. As fast as this collects 

 on the surface of the water, it is taken off and boiled over 

 a quick fire. This animal oil, called tortoise butter (manteca 

 de tortugas)* keeps the better, it is said, in proportion as it 

 has undergone a strong ebullition. When well prepared, 

 it is limpid, inodorous, and scarcely yellow. The missiona- 

 ries compare it to the best olive oil, and it is used not 

 merely for burning in lamps, but for cooking. It is not 

 easy, however, to procure oil of turtles' eggs quite pure. It 

 has generally a putrid smell, owing to the mixture of eggs 

 in which the young are already formed. 



I acquired some general statistical notions on the spot, by 

 consulting the missionary of Uruana, his lieutenant, and the 

 traders of Angostura. The shore of Uruana furnishes one 

 thousand botijas, or jars of oil, annually. The price of each 

 jar at Angostura varies from two piastres to two and a half. 

 We may admit that the total produce of the three shores, 

 where the cosecha, or gathering of eggs, is annually made, is 

 five thousand botijas. Now as two hundred eggs yield oil 

 enough to fill a bottle (limeta), it requires five thousand 

 eggs for a jar or botija of oil. Estimating at one hundred, 

 or one hundred and sixteen, the number of eggs that one 

 tortoise produces, and reckoning that one third of these is 

 broken at the time of laying, particularly by the 'mad 

 tortoises,' we may presume that, to obtain annually fiv 

 thousand jars of oil, three hundred and thirty thousand 

 arrau tortoises, the weight of which amounts to one hundred 



* The Tamaiac Indians give it the name of carapa ; the MaypuroF 

 eaU if timi. 



