190 
PRODUCE OE THE ISLAND. 
sionado places marks to indicate the point where each tribe 
should stop in its labours. We were surprised to hear this 
‘harvest of eggs’ estimated like tho produce of a well- 
cultivated field. An area accurately measured of oue hun- 
dred and twenty feet long, and thirty feet wide, lias been 
known to yield one hunched jars of oil, valued at about 
forty pounds sterling. The Indians remove the earth 
with theh hands; they place the eggs they have collected 
in small baskets, carry them to their encampment, and 
throw them into long troughs of wood filled with water. 
In these troughs the eggs, broken and stirred with shovels, 
remain exposed to the sun till the oily part, which swims on 
the surface, has time to inspissate. As fast as this collects 
on the surface of the water, it is taken off and boiled over 
a quick fire. This animal oil, called tortoise butter (manteca 
tie tortugas)* keeps the better, it is said, in proportion as it 
has undergone a strong ebullition. When well prepared, 
it is limpid, inodorous, and scarcely' yellow. The missiona- 
ries compare it to the best olive oil, and it is used not 
merely for burning in lamps, but for cooking. It is not' 
easy, however, to procure oil of turtles’ eggs quite pure. It 
has generally a putrid smell, owing to the mixture of egg- 
i n which the young arc already formed. 
I acquired some general statistical notions on tho spot, by 
consulting the missionary of Uruana, his lieutenant, and the 
traders of Angostura. The shore ot' Uruana furnishes one 
thousand botijas, or jars of oil, annually. The price of each 
jar at Angostura varies from two piastres to two and a half- 
We may admit that the total produce of tho three shores, 
where the cosecha , or gathering of eggs, is anuually made, is 
five thousand botijas. Now as two hundred eggs yield oil 
enough to fill a bottle (limeta), it requires five thousand 
eggs for a jar or botija of oil. Estimating at one hundred, 
or one hundred and sixteen, the number of eggs that one 
tortoise produces, and reckoning that one third of these is 
broken at the time of laying, particularly by the ‘mad 
tortoises,’ we may presume that, to obtain annually fiv 0 
thousand jars of oil, three hundred and thirty thousand 
array, tortoises, the weight of which amounts to one hundred 
* The Tamaaac. Indians give it the name of carapa ; the May pure* 
call i? tirni. 
