It is a well-marked species, and readily distinguished from all its kindred by the absence of white on the rump and wing-coverts. We caught a huge turtle with a hook and line: a number of lines were hanging from the bow, the ship almost still, when there was a tremendous hue-and-cry that a turtle was hooked. To hold him with the line would have been an utter impossibility—he could have smashed it like pack-thread. The barbed trident called ‘a grains’ was brought into immediate requisition, and from the ‘dolphin-striker’ an experienced hand sent it crashing through the turtle’s armour-plates; a boat was lowered, tackle rigged, and the ponderous reptile safely deposited on the deck. The species I was unable to determine, for I had barely time to seize the sucking-fish (_Remora_) that were clinging to its shell in clusters, and observe the curious beings, parasitic and others, that evidently used the turtle as a living raft, on which to cruise about, ere the remorseless cook, armed with knife, axe, and saw, hewed and hacked the monster, I could have devoted days to examine, into junks for the pot. The harvest gleaned from his shell I shall speak of in the chapter on Fishes. All our fresh provisions had long been expended, and water reduced to a very small supply per diem, when on the 11th of July, the seventieth day at sea, ‘land on the starboard bow’ was an announcement welcome to all. Being near dark, it was deemed advisable to stand off until morning, and enter the Straits of Juan de Fuca with a good light. It appeared a longer night than I ever remember, so impatient was I once more to see and tread on _terra firma_; what in the mist and distance seemed but a dark undefined shadow, was in reality the lighthouse, standing grey and lonely on the wild wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery. The wind was dead aft, and blowing freshly, as we dashed up the straits, faster far than we had ever gone during the long tedious voyage. Nowhere is this curious inlet more than twelve miles in width: on the right, seen over an ocean of dark-green forest, sloping to the shore, were the snowy summits of the Olympian range of mountains; on the left the more rounded and lower metamorphic hills, quite as densely timbered, but broken along the coast-line into open glades and grassy slopes, like well-kept lawns, reaching to the water-line. About sixty miles from the entrance we round the dreaded ‘race rocks,’ and with scarce time for even a hasty look at the new land, glide round a rocky point, on which is a house, and people anxiously watching our movements. The sails are clewed up; orders are rapidly given, and as quickly executed. A heavy plunging splash and the rattle of the massive cable, as it crashes through the hawse-holes, proclaim our anchorage in Esquimalt Harbour, and safe arrival at Vancouver Island. CHAPTER II. VICTORIA—THE SALMON: ITS HAUNTS AND HABITS.