192 
ENEMIES OF THE TORTOISE. 
to a monk of the Orinoco), the small traders of Angostura, 
who visit the encampments, can give, unfortunately, no verv 
exact information. But in these distant countries no doubt 
is ever entertained of the news brought by a white man 
from the capital. The profit of the traders in oil amounts 
to seventy or eighty per cent. ; for the Indians sell it then 
at the price of a piastre a jar or botija, and the expense 
carriage is not more than two-filths of a piastre pci jm • 
The Indians bring away also a considerable quantity of eg!?* 
dried in the sun, or slightly boiled. Our rowers had baskets 
or little bags of cotton-cloth filled with these eggs, lhcir 
taste is not disagreeable, when well preserved. We were 
shown largo shells of turtles, which had been destroyed b) 
the jaguars. These animals follow the arraus towards those 
places on the beach where the eggs are laid. They surprise 
the arraus on the sand; and, in order to devour them a 
their ease, turn them in such a manner that the under shell 
is uppermost. In this situation the turtles cannot rise , 
and as the jaguar turns many more than he can eat in on 
night, the Indians often avail themselves of his cunning ana 
JV *Whra we reflect on the difficulty experienced by the 
naturalist in getting out the body of the turtle without 
separating the upper and under shells, we cannot sufficiently 
wonder at the suppleness of the tiger’s paw, which is able to 
remove the double armour of the arrau, as if the adhei » 
parts of the muscles had been cut by a surgical instrumen • 
'Che jaguar pursues the turtle into the water when it is 
very deep. It even digs up the eggs; and together i# 
the crocodile, the heron, and the galinazo vulture, is 
most cruel enemy of the little turtles recently hatched, t 1 
island of Pararuma had been so much infested with croc 
diles the preceding year, during the egg-harvest, that I 
Indians in one night caught eighteen, of twelve or iitte 
feet long, by means of curved pieces of iron, baited with to 
flesh of the mauati. Besides the beasts of the forests « 
have iust named, the wild Indians also very much dimu» s 
the quantity of the oil. Warned by the first slight 
which they call ‘turtle-rams’ (peje canepon),* they hast « 
to the banks of the Orinoco, and kill the turtles with P 
In the Tamanac language, from peje, a tortoise, sad catiepo, r»m- 
