222 LIFE OF AUDUBON. 



they were, and that I could have purchased one of the logger- 

 head kind, that weighed more than seven hundred pounds, for 

 little more money than another of only thirty pounds, 



" While I gazed on the turtle I thought of the soups the con- 

 tents of its shell would have furnished for a lord-mayor's dinner, 

 of the numerous eggs which its swollen body contained, and of 

 the curious carriage which might be made of its shell — a car in 

 which Yenus herself might sail over the Caribbean Sea, pro- 

 vided her tender doves lent their aid in drawing the divinity, 

 and provided no shark or hurricane came to upset it. The 

 turtler assured me that, although the great monster was in 

 fact better meat than any other of a less size, there was no 

 disposing of it, unless indeed it had been in his power to have 

 sent it to some very distant market. I would willingly have 

 purchased it, but I knew that if killed the flesh could not keep 

 much longer than a day, and on that account I bought eight or 

 ten small ones, which ' my friends ' really relished exceedingly, 

 and which served to support them for a long time. Turtles 

 such as I have spoken of are caught in various ways on the 

 coasts of the Floridas, or in estuaries or rivers. Some tnrtlers 

 are in the habit of setting great nets across the entrance of 

 streams, so as to answer the purpose either at the flow or at the 

 ebb of the waters. These nets are formed of very large meshes, 

 into which the turtles partially get entangled. Others harpoon 

 them in the usual manner ; but in my estimation, no method is 

 equal to that employed by Mr. Egan, the pilot, of Indian Isle. 



" That extraordinary turtler had an iron instrument which he 

 called a ' peg,' and which at each end had a point, not unlike 

 what nailmakers call a hrad, it being four-cornered, but flattish, 

 and of a shape somewhat resembling the beak of an ivory-billed 

 woodpecker, together with a neck and shoulder. Between the 

 two shoulders of this instrument a fine tough line, fifty or more 

 fathoms in length, was fastened by one end, being passed through 

 a hole in the centre of the peg, and the line itself was carefully 

 coiled up and placed in a convenient part of the canoe. One 

 extremity of this peg enters a sheath of iron that loosely 

 attaches it to a long wooden spear, until a turtle has been 

 pierced through the shell by the other extremity. He of the 

 canoe paddles away as silently as possible whenever he espies 



