12 
TURTLE. 
they take this opportunity to pierce him with the 
iron peg, which slips out of the socket, but is fast- 
ened with a string to the pole. If the turtle is com- 
pletely spent by being long pursued, he tamely 
submits, when struck, to be taken into the boat, or 
hauled ashore. A good diver will sometimes go to 
the bottom for one of these animals, and, getting 
upon his back, raise the fore part of him, and in 
this manner bring him to the surface, where a per- 
son waits in readiness to slip a noose about his neck 
and drag him on shore. 
We are informed by La Cepede, that on the 
coast of Guinea the natives take these animals in a 
kind of net called a foie , which measures forty or 
fifty feet in length, and is fifteen or twenty feet broad. 
It is constructed of very strong line, and the meshes 
are about a foot square. Two floats made of a light 
prickly plant, called moucou moucou by the Indians, 
are fixed to the edge of every second mesh. Four 
or five stones, weighing about forty or fifty pounds 
each, are hung to the lower border of the net, in 
order to make it sink and keep it properly extended. 
The apparatus is completed by two large pieces of 
the moucou moucou fastened to the upper corners, to 
serve as buoys, and mark the situation of the net. 
They place these nets about the small islands to 
which the turtle repair for the sake of the fuel, 
or sea-weed that grows on the adjacent rocks. The 
inhabitants carefully watch them ; and as soon as 
the nets appear to sink in one place more than 
another they are drawn, and the prize secured. 
