XVII 
GREAT TORTOISE 
409 
well-chosen tracks. Near the springs it was a curious spectacle 
to behold many of these huge creatures, one set eagerly 
travelling onwards with outstretched necks, and another set 
returning, after having drunk their fill. When the tortoise 
arrives at the spring, quite regardless of any spectator, he 
buries his head in the water above his eyes, and greedily 
swallows great mouthfuls, at the rate of about ten in a minute. 
The inhabitants say each animal stays three or four days in 
the neighbourhood of the water, and then returns to the lower 
country ; but they differed respecting the frequency of these 
visits. The animal probably regulates them according to the 
nature of the food on which it has lived. It is, however, 
certain, that tortoises can subsist even on those islands where 
there is no other water than what falls during a few rainy days 
in the year. 
I believe it is well ascertained that the bladder of the 
frog acts as a reservoir for the moisture necessary to its existence : 
such seems to be the case with the tortoise. For some time 
after a visit to the springs, their urinary bladders are distended 
with fluid, which is said gradually to decrease in volume, and to 
become less pure. The inhabitants, when walking in the lower 
district, and overcome with thirst, often take advantage of this 
circumstance, and drink the contents of the bladder if full: in 
one I saw killed, the fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very 
slightly bitter taste. The inhabitants, however, always first 
drink the water in the pericardium, which is described as being 
best. 
The tortoises, when purposely moving towards any point, 
travel by night and day and arrive at their journey’s end much 
sooner than would be expected. The inhabitants, from 
observing marked individuals, consider that they travel a 
distance of about eight miles in two or three days. One large 
tortoise, which I watched, walked at the rate of sixty yards in 
ten minutes, that is 360 yards in the hour, or four miles a day, 
—allowing a little time for it to eat on the road. During the 
breeding season, when the male and female are together, the 
male utters a hoarse roar or bellowing, which, it is said, can be 
heard at the distance of more than a hundred yards. The female 
never uses her voice, and the male only at these times ; so that 
when the people hear this noise they know that the two are 
