258 
The Turtles Want to Eat, 
tear it to pieces until the head only is left. No mammal that swims the 
stream escapes their exorbitant greed : indeed, even the limbs of the water 
fowl and turtle, and the toes of the alligators are not safe. If the kaiman 
is attacked by them it usually rolls itself on its back and stretches its 
belly on the surface. The sui'est sign of their voracity is most con- 
spicuous, however, in this that they do not spare their own wounded mates, 
as I have myself noticed. While busy fishing one evening I hauled quite 
a fair-sized pirai on land, and after thinking I had killed it by striking 
it smartly on the head, placed it beside me on the rock. Nevertheless it 
all of a sudden made a jump or two and before it could be prevented, got 
into the water where, although half stunned, it swam about on the 
surface. In a twinkling, 16 to 20 of its mates were gathered round, and 
within a few minutes nothing but the head was left. Like some of the 
species of Silurus it also grunts when drawn out of the water. The 
flesh is really not without taste but extremely bony, for which reason 
we only bothered about it when we could not catch any other. 
755. Four miles farther to the southward we reached the northern 
point of Tambicabo, a long island that stretches 8 miles down the Esse- 
quibo and divides it into two channels which branch off at so considerable 
an angle that they have been often mistaken for two different rivers. In 
a deep and picturesque bight of the western arm there formerly stood 
Arinda, a Dutch station. On the farther side of Tambicabo the river 
surface was again intercepted with numerous islands, and our turtle-egg 
harvest commenced afresh. Whenever passing a sandbank uncovered 
by water, or a small island, w T e always had to make a stop so as to fill all 
the boats with the countless eggs, for it was only now that the actual 
laying season seemed to have commenced. Whole baskets of eggs were 
collected by the Indians in a very short time, Mr. Fryer having in the 
meantime discovered that the yolks formed an excellent substitute for 
the milk wanting in our coffee. During the day we saw whole crowds of 
turtle near the sandbanks stretching their little heads out of the water as 
if perhaps wishing to view the spot where they proposed ridding them- 
selves of their burden at night. The slightest noise frightened them away 
and our coloured crew maintained that those thus scared off always 
searched for another island or sandbank. At nightfall they betake 
themselves to the land, scrape out with their hind feet the holes in' the 
sand already mentioned, place themselves vertically in them, lay their 
eggs, cover the cavities over again and make their way to the water. Our 
Indians often surprised them about midnight at this manoeuvre, 
when they just turned those which they caught on to their backs so as 
to lose no unnecessary time in carrying them off and letting the other 
scared ones escape. The flesh however was at this period unusually 
tough and coarse. Just like the coloured folk of the lower river areas, 
the Indians of the upper reaches arrange big expeditions here about 
this time, in order to collect and smoke the innumerable eggs, a condition 
in which they not only keep a fair time, but also taste quite good. The 
white of the egg disappears in the process, only the yolk getting hard. 
By the presence or absence of a pair of little black dots the coloured man 
and the Indian can recognise at once whether the development of the 
