288 AUSTRALIA CHAP, XII 
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,! 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. 
17th. 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 te. affairs. 
