TORTOISES AND TURTLES.
The Galapagos—The Elephantine Tortoise—The Marsh-Tortoises—Mantega—River-Tortoises—Marine-Turtles—On the Brazilian Coast—Their Numerous Enemies—The Island of Ascension—Turtle-Catching at the Bahama and Keeling Islands—Turtle caught by means of the Sucking-Fish—The Green Turtle—The Hawksbill Turtle—Turtle Scaling in the Feejee Islands—Barbarous mode of selling Turtle-flesh in Ceylon—The Coriaceous Turtle—Its awful Shrieks.
In the South Sea, exposed to the vertical beams of the equatorial sun, lies a large group of uninhabited islands, on whose sterile shores you would look in vain for the palms, bananas, or bread-fruit trees of more favoured lands, as rain falls only upon the heights, and never descends to call forth plenty on the arid coasts.
AMBLYRHYNE.
And yet, this desolate group offers many points of interest to the naturalist, for the Galapagos or Tortoise Islands represent, as it were, a little world in themselves, a peculiar creation of animals and plants, reminding us, more strongly than the productions of any other land, of an earlier epoch of planetary life. Here are no less than twenty-six different species of land-birds, which, with one single exception, are found nowhere else. Their plumage is homely, like the flora of their native country; their tameness so great that they may be killed with a stick. A sea-mew, likewise peculiar to this group, mixes its shriek with the hoarse-resounding surge; lizards, existing in no other country, swarm about the shore, and the gigantic land-tortoise (Testudo indica, elephantina), although now spread over many other countries, is supposed by Mr. Darwin to have had its original322 seat in the Galapagos, where it was formerly found in such vast numbers as to have given the group its Spanish name. If the seafarer visits these treeless shores, which as yet produce nothing else worth gathering, it is chiefly for the purpose of catching a few of these huge animals, which, in spite of frequent persecutions, still amply reward a short sojourn with a rich supply of fresh meat. Their capture costs nothing but the trouble, for man has not yet drawn the boundary marks of property over the tenantless land.
The elephantine tortoise inhabits as well the low and sterile country, where it feeds on the fleshy leaves of the cactus, as the mountainous regions where the moist trade-wind calls forth a richer vegetation of ferns, grasses, and various trees. On this meagre food, which seems hardly sufficient for a goat, it thrives so well that three men are often scarcely able to lift it, and it not seldom furnishes more than 200 pounds of excellent meat.
‘The tortoise,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘is very fond of water, drinking large quantities, and wallowing in the mud. The larger islands alone possess springs, and these are always situated towards the central parts, and at a considerable elevation. The tortoises, therefore, which frequent the lower districts, when thirsty, are obliged to travel from a long distance. Their broad and well-beaten paths radiate off in every direction, from the wells even down to the sea coast, and the Spaniards, by following them up, first discovered the watering places. When I landed at Chatham Island, I could not imagine what animal travelled so methodically along the well-chosen tracks. Near the springs it was a curious spectacle to behold many of these great monsters, one set eagerly travelling onward with outstretched necks, and another set returning after having drank their fill. When the tortoise arrives at the spring, quite regardless of any spectator, it buries its head in the water above the eyes, and greedily swallows great mouthfuls, at the rate of about ten in a minute. The inhabitants27 say each animal stays three or four days in the neighbourhood of the water, and then returns to the lower country; but they differed in their accounts respecting the frequency323 of these visits. The animal probably regulates them according to the nature of the food which it has consumed. 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, the urinary bladder of these animals is distended with fluid, which is said gradually to decrease in volume, and to become less pure. The inhabitants, when walking in the lower districts and overcome with thirst, often take advantage of this circumstance by killing a tortoise, and if the bladder is full, drinking its contents. In one I saw killed, the fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste.
‘The tortoises, when moving towards any definite point, travel by night and day, and arrive at their journey’s end much sooner than would be expected. The inhabitants, from observations on marked individuals, consider that they can move a distance of about eight miles in two or three days. One large tortoise, which I watched, I found walked at the rate of sixty yards in ten minutes, that is, three hundred and sixty in the hour, or four miles a day, allowing also a little time for it to eat on the road. The flesh of this animal is largely employed, both fresh and salted, and a beautifully clear oil is prepared from the fat.
‘When a tortoise is caught, the man makes a slit in the skin near its tail, so as to see inside its body, whether the fat under the dorsal plate is thick. If it is not, the animal is liberated, and it is said to recover soon from this strange operation. In order to secure the tortoises, it is not sufficient to turn them like turtle (their upper buckler being highly arched, while it is more flattened in the aquatic families, for the better adaptation of their forms to motion in a liquid), for they are often able to regain their upright position.’
They are said to be completely deaf; so much is certain, that they do not perceive a person even when walking close behind them. Mr. Darwin often amused himself by overtaking the slow and monstrous creatures, who, as soon as he had passed them, instantly withdrew their head and legs, and fell flat324 down with a loud hiss and heavy noise as if touched by lightning. He then mounted upon their back, and on giving them a smart slap or two on the hind part of their carapace, they rose and leisurely proceeded with their learned freight, the author of ‘Origin of Species’ finding it very difficult to maintain his equilibrium on this strange beast of burthen.
It is a remarkable fact, that though the land-tortoises are scattered in many places over the warmer regions of the globe, and even extend as far as Patagonia and the south of Europe, yet not a single one has hitherto been found in Australia, where, equally strange to say, no indigenous monkey exists.
MARSH TORTOISE. (EMYS PICTA.)
The marsh tortoises, or Emydæ, have their chief seat in tropical America and the Indian Archipelago, where an abundance of swamps, lagoons, lakes, pools, and gently-flowing rivers favours the increase of their numbers. In the month of September, as soon as the sand-banks begin to be uncovered, the females deposit their eggs, scraping hollows of a considerable depth, covering them over carefully, smoothing and beating down the sand, and then walking across and across the place in various directions, for the purpose of concealment. There are such numbers of them, that some beaches are almost one mass of eggs beneath the surface, and here the Indians come to make oil. A canoe is filled with the eggs, which are all broken and mashed up together. The oil rises to the top, and is skimmed off and boiled, when it will keep, and is used both for light and for cooking. During this operation, the neighbouring strand swarms with carrion vultures, and the smell of the offal attracts also a number of alligators, eager to come in for their share of the feast. Millions of eggs are thus annually destroyed, and of those that remain a very small portion only arrives at maturity. When the young tortoises issue from the egg and run to the water, many enemies are awaiting them. Great alligators open their jaws, and swallow them by hundreds; the jaguars and the smaller felidæ from the forest come to feed upon them; eagles and buzzards and the great wood ibises attend the feast, and when they have escaped all these, there are many ravenous fishes which seize them in the stream.
325 The marsh-tortoises may be said to form the connecting link between the eminently aquatic marine and river chelonians and the land-tortoises, as the formation of their feet, armed with sharp claws or crooked nails, and furnished with a kind of flexible web, connecting their distinct and movable toes, allows them both to advance much quicker on the dry land than the latter, and to swim rapidly either on the surface or in the depth of the waters.
Endowed with more rapid powers of locomotion, they are not vegetarians, like the land-tortoises, but chiefly live on mollusks, fishes, frogs, toads, and annelides.
The river-tortoises differ in many respects from the sea-turtles, although formed like them for a purely aquatic life. In both families the extremities are complete fins, serving as oars, but the fore feet of the river-tortoises are not double the length of the hind feet, as we find in the marine chelonians; and while the latter have a short apoplectic neck, that of the river-tortoise is generally very long, and surmounted by a small and narrow head. The river-tortoises are exclusively confined to the warmer countries of the globe, and sometimes weigh as much as seventy pounds. It seems that during the night, and when they fancy themselves secure from danger, they repose upon the small river islands, or on rocks and trunks of trees that have fallen on the banks, or are drifted along by the current, and instantly plunge again into the water at the sight of man or at the least alarming noise. They are extremely voracious, and being very active swimmers, kill numbers of fish and reptiles. When they wish to seize their food or to defend themselves, they dart forwards their head and long neck with the velocity of lightning, and are said in this manner to surprise and seize even small birds that incautiously fly too near the surface of the water. They bite lustily with their sharp beak, never quitting their hold till they have fairly scooped out the morsel, so that the fishermen stand in great awe of their powerful mandibles, and generally cut off their head as soon as they are caught, rightly judging this to be the most radical means to prevent any further mischief. The Indians of the Amazons catch them either with the hook, net, or arrow. The last is the most ingenious method, and requires the most skill. The tortoise never shows its back above water,326 only rising to breathe, which it does by protruding its nostrils almost imperceptibly above the surface. The Indian’s keen eye perceives this, even at a considerable distance, but an arrow shot obliquely would glance off the smooth flat shell, so he shoots up into the air with such accurate judgment that the arrow falls nearly vertically upon the shell, which it penetrates, and remains securely fixed in the tortoise’s back. The head of the arrow fits loosely on to the shaft, and is connected with it by a long fine cord, carefully wound round it; as the tortoise dives they separate, the light shaft forming a float or buoy which the Indian secures, and by the attached cord dr............