CHAP. I. 
TURTLES AT ASCENSION. 
11 
station passed by, and on his stopping to observe my occupa¬ 
tion, we entered into conversation respecting the state of the 
island. From him I learned that many of the coloured men 
whom I saw around were liberated negroes, who had been 
educated by the missionaries at Sierra Leone, and had proved 
trustworthy and well-conducted men. The church and the 
school-house appeared to be neat and appropriate buildings. 
Before the former two brass guns, recently taken from the 
slave depot at Lagos, were fixed as trophies. 
The turtles, for which Ascension is so widely celebrated, 
are caught in large numbers along the shore, 300 being some¬ 
times taken in one year. They are kept in two large ponds 
or inclosures, ten or a dozen yards square, on the beach; into 
these the sea water is admitted by openings in the walls of 
rudely piled lava by which they are surrounded. In these 
two ponds we were told there were at that time from 150 to 
200 turtles, each weighing from 100 to 300 lbs. The turtles 
belong to the government, and a centinel is placed on the 
adjacent beach to protect them during the season in which 
they resort to the place to deposit their eggs. On the evening 
of this day, which was intensely hot, we returned to our ship, 
taking out with us in the same boat a turtle that weighed 
300 lbs., which our purser had purchased at 2^d. per lb. We 
were indulged with portions of this luxury the next morning 
at our breakfast table, partly in the form of turtle steaks, 
which, to my fancy, very much resembled sinewy veal cutlets; 
and at dinner we had fricasseed turtle fins, which looked 
rather too green and rich for me to venture upon. 
We entered Table Bay on the 22nd of May. The neat 
white-walled villas stretching along at the foot of the moun¬ 
tains, and, towards Green Point, but a short distance from 
the sea, the batteries, the extensive African city with its flat- 
roofed and white or ruddy ochre-coloured houses, the spires of 
the different churches, the jetties, the numerous vessels in 
