TEE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 131 



as we regarded the victim. We had run down the mere 

 frame-work of a veritable hog, with a hide loosely folded as 

 a hound's, and as savage-visaged as a wolf. Slinging him 

 over a pole, we toted him to the beach, and stripped off his 

 hide without finding a trace of fat. Round, hard knots of 

 muscular flesh formed what should have been ham, shoulder, 

 and neck. But he was fully developed in teeth and bristles, 

 and these formed the greater part of him. The entire flesh 

 might have been eaten by our party at a meal. But we 

 had our boar-hunt, and came home not empty-handed. 



The significant point of our adventure was that, in the 

 profusion of vegetable growth, the elements of nutrition 

 were so scant that even a pig could not glean the mate- 

 rial for his prerogative of fatness ; and we read, in the 

 brute's attenuated proportions, that the unfortunate wretch 

 who should desert his ship might starve in this garden. In 

 striking contrast with the absence of food in this most lux- 

 urious tropical growth is the profusion of sustenance afford- 

 ed in the seeming desolation of the volcanic Galapagos. As 

 vepresented in a former chapter, they are entirely igneous 

 in their formation, vitreous scoria, pumice, and cindery ash- 

 es covering hills and plains ; and these unpromising materi- 

 als are so loosely arranged that the rains sink at once, and 

 are entirely lost, but one known spring of water existing in 

 the entire group. The cactuses, and a few thorny, gnarled, 

 woody-leaved shrubs are the principal growths, and the 

 small fruit of the prickly pear is the only vegetable* edible 

 by man. Yet on this most unpromising field nature has 

 abundantly provided for the possible presence of the latter. 

 In these low solitudes are found great numbers of small 

 lizards, and the monster of the tribe, the great iguana. 

 These great lizards were dainty feasts for the buccaneers of 

 old, as they lay here in wait for the treasure-laden galleons 

 of Spain, in passage from Lima to Panama, and when they 



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