288 AUSTRALIA CHAP, xn 



dressed for our dinner, and proved excellent meat. In the 

 evening the boat returned from the reef, bringing four 

 turtles ; so we may now be said to swim in plenty. Our 

 turtles are certainly far preferable to any I have eaten in 

 England, which must be due to their being eaten fresh from 

 the sea before they have either wasted away their fat, or, by 

 the unnatural food which they receive in the tubs where 

 they are kept, acquired a fat of not so delicious a flavour 

 as it is in their wild state. Most of those we have caught 

 have been green turtle from two to three hundred pounds 

 in weight ; these, when killed, were always found to be full 

 of turtle-grass (a kind of Conferva I believe). Two only 

 were loggerheads, which made but indifferent meat ; in their 

 stomachs were nothing but shells. 



16th. As the ship was now ready for her departure, Dr. 

 Solander and I employed ourselves in winding up our 

 botanical bottoms, 1 examining what we wanted and making 

 up our complement of specimens of as many species as 

 possible. The boat brought three turtles again to-day, one 

 of which was a male, who was easily to be distinguished 

 from the female by the vast size of his tail, which was four 

 times longer and thicker than hers ; in every other respect 

 they were exactly alike. One of our people on board the 

 ship, who had been a turtler in the West Indies, told me 

 that they never sent male turtles home to England from 

 thence, because they wasted in keeping much more than the 

 females, which we found to be true. 



1*7 th. Tupia, who was over the water by himself, saw 

 three Indians, who gave him a kind of longish root about 

 as thick as a man's finger and of a very good taste. 



18th. The Indians were over with us to-day and seemed 

 to have lost all fear of us, becoming quite familiar. One of 

 them, at our desire, threw his lance, which was about eight 

 feet in length ; it flew with a degree of swiftness and 

 steadiness that really surprised me, never being above four 

 feet from the ground, and stuck deep in at a distance of 

 fifty paces. After this they ventured on board the ship and 



1 i.e. affairs. 



