Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. — Volume 2: Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition.MacGillivray, John
History
Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. — Volume 2: Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition.
MacGillivray, John
Kennedy, Edmund Besley Court, 1818-1848; Natural history -- Oceania; Oceania -- Description and travel; Rattlesnake (Ship); Stanley, Owen
There are some favourite lookout stations for turtle where the tide runs
strongly off a high rocky point. At many such places, distinguished by
large cairns* of stones, bones of turtle, dugongs, etc., watch is kept
during the season, and, when a turtle is perceived drifting past with the
tide, the canoe is manned and sent in chase.
(*Footnote. One of these on Albany Rock is a pile of stones, five feet
high and seven wide, mixed up with turtle and human bones, and, when I
last saw it, it was covered with long trailing shoots of Flagellaria
indica placed there by a turtling party to ensure success, as I was told,
but how, was not explained. The human bones were the remains of a man
killed there many years ago by a party of Kowraregas who took his head
away with them. The mounds described and figured in Jukes' Voyage of the
Fly (Volume 1 pages 137 and 138) and considered by us at the time to be
graves, are merely the usual cairns at a lookout place for turtle.)
With their usual improvidence, the Australians, when they take a turtle,
feast upon it until all has been consumed and the cravings of hunger
induce them to look out for another; but the Torres Strait Islanders are
accustomed to dry the flesh to supply them with food during their
voyages. The meat is cut into thin slices, boiled in a melon shell, stuck
upon skewers, and dried in the sun. Prepared in this manner it will keep
for several weeks, but requires a second cooking before being used, on
account of its hardness and toughness. The fat which rises to the surface
during the boiling is skimmed off and kept in joints of bamboo and turtle
bladders, being much prized as food; I have even seen the natives drink
it off in its hot fluid state with as much gusto as ever alderman enjoyed
his elaborately prepared turtle soup.
HAWKSBILL TURTLE.
The hawksbill turtle (Caretta imbricata) that chiefly producing the
tortoise-shell of commerce, resorts to the shores in the neighbourhood of
Cape York later in the season than the green species, and is
comparatively scarce. It is only taken at night when depositing its eggs
in the sand, as the sharpness of the margin of its shell renders it
dangerous to attempt to turn it in the water--indeed even the green
turtle, with a comparatively rounded margin to the carapace,
occasionally, in struggling to escape, inflicts deep cuts on the inner
side of the leg of its captor, of which I myself have seen an instance.
Of the tortoise-shell collected at Cape York and the Prince of Wales
Islands a small portion is converted into fishhooks, the rest is bartered
either to Europeans or to the Island blacks, who fashion it into various
ornaments.
CAPTURE OF THE DUGONG.
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