nests are discovered not only by men, but also by beasts of prey, and the
eggs are collected, or destroyed on the spot in great numbers, as on certain
parts of the shores hundreds of turtles are known to deposit their
eggs within the space of a mile. They form a new hole each time they
lay, and the second is generally dug near the first, as if the animal were
quite unconscious of what had befallen it. It will readily be understood
that the numerous eggs seen in a turtle on cutting it up could not be all
laid the same season. The whole number deposited by an individual in
one summer may amount to four hundred, whereas if the animal is caught
on or near her nest, as I have witnessed, the remaining eggs, all small,
without shells, and as it were threaded like so many large beads, exceed
three thousand. In an instance where I found that number, the turtle
weighed nearly four hundred pounds. The young, soon after being
hatched, and when yet scarcely larger than a dollar, scratch their way
through their sandy covering, and immediately betake themselves to the
water.
The food of the Green Turtle consists chiefly of marine plants, more
especially the Grasswrack (Zostera marina ) , which they cut near the
roots to procure the most tender and succulent parts. Their feeding
grounds, as I have elsewhere said, are easily discovered by floating masses
of these plants on the flats, or along the shores to which they resort.
The Hawk-billed species feeds on sea-weeds, crabs, various kinds of shellfish,
and fishes; the Loggerhead mostly on the fish of conch-shells of
large size, which they are enabled, by means of their powerful beak, to
crush to pieces with apparently as much ease as a man cracks a walnut.
One which was brought on board the Marion, and placed near the fluke
of one of her anchors, make a deep indentation in that hammered piece
of iron that quite surprised me. The Trunk Turtle feeds on mollusca,
fish, Crustacea, sea urchins, and various marine plants.
All the species move through the water with surprising speed ; but
the Green and Hawk-billed in particular, remind you, by their celerity
and the ease of their motions, of the progress of a bird in the air. It is
therefore no easy matter to strike one with a spear, and yet this is often
done by an accomplished turtler.
While at Key West and other islands on the coast, where I made the
observations here presented to you, I chanced to have need to purchase
some turtles, to feed my friends on board the Lady of the Green Mantle
—not my friends her gallant officers, or the brave tars who formed her
crew, for all of them had already been satiated with turtle soup, but my
friends the Herons, of which I had a goodly number alive in coops, intending
to carry them to J O H N BACHMAN of Charleston, and other persons
for whom I ever feel a sincere regard. So I went to a " crawl,1' accompanied
by Dr B E N J A M I N STROBEL, to inquire about prices, when, to my
surprise, I found that the smaller the turtles, above ten pounds weight,
the dearer they were, and that I could have purchased one of the loggerhead
kind that weighed more than seven hundred pounds, for little more
money than another of only thirty pounds. While I gazed on the large
one, I thought of the soups the contents of its shell would have furnished
for a " Lord Mayor's dinner,11 of the numerous eggs which its swollen
body contained, and of the curious carriage which might be made of its
shell,—a car in which Venus herself might sail over the Carribbean sea,
provided her tender doves lent their aid in drawing the divinity, and provided
no shark or hurricane came to upset it. The turtler assured me
that although the " great monster" was in fact better meat than any other
of a less size, there was no disposing of it, unless indeed it had been in
his power to have sent it to some very distant market. I would willingly
have purchased it, but I knew that if killed, its flesh could not keep
much longer than a day, and on that account I bought eight or ten small
ones, which " my friends" really relished exceedingly, and which served
to support them for a long time.
Turtles such as I have spoken of, are caught in various ways on the
eoasts of the Floridas, or in estuaries and rivers. Some turtlers are in
the habit of setting great nets across the entrance of streams, so as to answer
the purpose either at the flow or at the ebb of the waters. These
nets are formed of very large meshes, into which the turtles partially
enter, when, the more they attempt to extricate themselves, the more they
get entangled. Others harpoon them in the usual manner; but in my
estimation no method is equal to that employed by Mr EGAN, the Pilot
of Indian Isle.
That extraordinary turtler had an iron instrument, which he called a
peg, and which at each end had a point not unlike what nail-makers call a
brad, it being four-cornered but flattish, and of a shape somewhat resembling
the beak of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, together with a neck
and shoulder. Between the two shoulders of this instrument a tine
tough line, fifty or more fathoms in length, was fastened by one end
being passed through a bole in the centre of the peg, and the line itsself