The Manatee. 
101 
Westminster Aquarium, when seen at close quarters, was 
an inert, clumsy-looking animal, bearing far more resem¬ 
blance to an overgrown conger than to a human being. 
But sailors are gifted with considerable powers of fancy, 
and it may be that the appearance of this creature at dusk, 
with rounded head lifted above the waves, and sometimes 
holding its young one to its breast, had a sufficiently 
human aspect to afford material at least for yarns. 
There are some good descriptions of the manatee by 
some of the more accurate observers who “ sailed the 
Spanish Main.” Kobert Harcourt, in his relation of a 
voyage to G-uiana, 1608, thus describes this animal:— 
“ There is also a sea-fish which usually corameth into the fresh 
waters, especially in the winter and wet season. It is of great esteeme 
amongst us, and we account it halfe flesh, for the bloud of it is warm. 
It commeth up into the shallow waters in the drowned lands, and feedeth 
upon grasse and weedes: the Indians name it coiumero, and the Spaniards 
manati , but we call it the sea-cow. In taste it is like beefe, will take 
salt, and serve to victuall ships. Of this fish may bee made an excellent 
oile for many purposes; the fat of it is good to frie either fish or flesh. 
The hide, as I have heard, being dried in the sunne and kept from wet, 
will serve for targets and armour against the Indian arrowes. In the 
wet season the store of them are infinite. Some of these were here¬ 
tofore brought into England by Sir Walter Bawleigh.” ( Purchas , 
vol. iv. p. 1275.) 
Joseph Acosta, a learned Jesuit, and a careful writer, tells 
us in his observations on the West Indies, that— 
“at the Islands which they cal Barlovente, which are Cuba, Saint 
Dominique, Portrique, and Jamaique, they finde a fish which they call 
manati, a strange kind of fish, if we may call it fish, a creature which 
ingenders her young ones alive, and doth nourish them with milke, 
feeding of grasse in the fields, but in effect it lives continually in the 
water, and therefore they eate it as fish; yet when I did eate of it at 
Saint Dominique on a Friday I had some scruple, not for that which 
is spoken, but for that in colour and taste it was like unto morsels of 
veale. . . . Manate therefore, is a fish of the sea, of the biggest sort, 
and much greater than the tiburon [shark] in length and breadth, and 
is very brutish and vile, so that it appeareth in forme like unto one of 
