CHAP. I. TURTLES AT ASCENSION. U 



station passed by, and on his stopping to observe my occupa- 

 tion, we entered into conversation respecting the state of the 

 island. From him I learned that many of the coloured men 

 whom I saw around were liberated negroes, who had been 

 educated by the missionaries at Sierra Leone, and had proved 

 trustworthy and well-conducted men. The church and the 

 school-house appeared to be neat and appropriate buildings. 

 Before the former two brass guns, recently taken from the 

 slave depot at Lagos, were fixed as trophies. 



The tin-tles, for which Ascension is so widely celebrated, 

 are caught in large numbers along the shore, 800 being some- 

 times taken in one year. They are kept in two large ponds 

 or inclosures, ten or a dozen yards square, on the beach ; into 

 these the sea water is admitted by openings in the walls of 

 rudely piled lava by which they are surrounded. In these 

 two ponds we were told there were at that time from 150 to 

 200 turtles, each weighing from 100 to 300 lbs. The turtles 

 belong to the government, and a centinel is placed on the 

 adjacent beach to protect them during the season in which 

 they resort to the place to deposit their eggs. On the evening 

 of this day, which was intensely hot, we returned to our ship, 

 taking out with us in the same boat a turtle that weighed 

 300 lbs., which our purser had purchased at 2^d. per lb. We 

 were indulged with portions of this luxury the next morning 

 at our breakfast table, partly in the form of turtle steaks, 

 which, to my fancy, very much resembled sinewy veal cutlets ; 

 and at dinner we had fricasseed turtle fins, which looked 

 rather too green and rich for me to venture upon. 



We entered Table Bay on the 22nd of May. The neat 

 white-walled villas stretching along at the foot of the moun- 

 tains, and, towards Green Point, but a short distance from 

 the sea, the batteries, the extensive African city with its flat- 

 roofed and white or ruddy ochre-coloured houses, the spires of 

 the different churches, the jetties, the numerous vessels in 



