456 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



creatures of the wild and worked for their con- 

 servation through all available channels. We 

 spent a week with a colony of birds that could 

 be counted by the hundred thousand until many 

 repaid our friendliness with fearlessness. We 

 captured manatees for the New York Aquarium 

 and caught crocodiles and pelicans for the Zoo. 

 It was chance that brought the shipment of 

 the manatees, or sea cows. I had looked for 

 them during twenty years without finding one. 

 Then it chanced that I struck a strange creature 

 with my light harpoon, just off of Madeira Ham- 

 mock. It proved to be my long-sought manatee, 

 eleven feet long and of massive proportions. We 

 were swamped four times while working him into 

 shallow water, where we went overboard with him 

 and handled him until he was unafraid. We 

 made a harness of rope and leaving him fastened 

 to an anchor by a two hundred foot line, in a 

 pasture of manatee grass, sailed for Miami and a 

 telegraph office. I gave the manatee to my 

 friends of the Zoo and of the Aquarium by wire 

 and with great difficulty secured official permis- 



