aining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardly
of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five long
months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land wear a
fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom-house officers
boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have curiously stared
at them, felt of them, and stroked them much as savages serve civilized
guests. But instead of three custom-house officers, behold these really
wondrous tortoises--none of your schoolboy mud-turtles--but black as
widower's weeds, heavy as chests of plate, with vast shells medallioned
and orbed like shields, and dented and blistered like shields that have
breasted a battle, shaggy, too, here and there, with dark green moss,
and slimy with the spray of the sea. These mystic creatures, suddenly
translated by night from unutterable solitudes to our peopled deck,
affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawled
forth from beneath the foundations of the world. Yea, they seemed the
identical tortoises whereon the Hindoo plants this total sphere. With a
lantern I inspected them more closely. Such worshipful venerableness of
aspect! Such furry greenness mantling the rude peelings and healing the
fissures of their shattered shells. I no more saw three tortoises. They
expanded--became transfigured. I seemed to see three Roman Coliseums in
magnificent decay.

Ye oldest inhabitants of this, or any other isle, said I, pray, give me
the freedom of your three-walled towns.

The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of
age:--dateless, indefinite endurance. And in fact that any other
creature can live and breathe as long as the tortoise of the Encantadas,
I will not readily believe. Not to hint of their known capacity of
sustaining life, while going without food for an entire year, consider
that impregnable armor of their living mail. What other bodily being
possesses such a citadel wherein to resist the assaults of Time?

As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient
scars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly
mountains of the isle--scars strangely widened, swollen, half
obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of
very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the
bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible
creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.

As I lay