to drive away any which
may be concealed from her sight. Landing, she slowly crawls over the
beach, raising her head, until she has found a suitable place for
depositing her eggs. She then at once forms a hollow in the sand by
shovelling it out from beneath her, first by her hind flippers, then
with her fore ones, until a hollow has been dug nearly two feet in
length. This operation she performs in about nine minutes. Having
deposited her eggs in regular layers, which occupies about twenty
minutes, she scrapes the sand over them, and then smooths the surface,
so that any one passing would not discover that any creature had been
there. This task accomplished, she rapidly retreats to the water,
leaving the eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sun. On some parts of
the shore, within the space of a mile, hundreds of turtles deposit their
eggs. Each time they form a new hole, generally near the first. The
young, when hatched, are scarcely larger than a dollar. Having
scratched their way through the sand, they at once run towards the
water, though a large number are picked up on their passage by birds and
the numerous other enemies of their race. All turtles have beaks; but
the loggerhead has the most powerful set of jaws, which enables it to
crush the shells of mollusca of large size with as much ease as a man
can crack a nut. Turtles swim through the water, in spite of their
shape, at great speed, with the same ease apparently as a bird flies
through the air; and we saw numbers of them, as we stood on the deck of
the schooner, darting about in search of their prey.

"How will you ever get hold of these fellows?" asked Carlos, as the
skipper was preparing to shove off in the boat, armed with his harpoon.

"You shall see," he answered.

Tim and I took the oars, Carlos steered, and Lejoillie, note-book in
hand, was ready to jot down his remarks.

Scarcely a minute had elapsed after leaving the side of the vessel, when
the skipper told us to pull in the direction he pointed, while he stood
in the bows of the boat, holding a single-pronged harpoon in his hand.
He had seen a turtle floating just below the surface. Almost the next
instant the weapon darted with tremendous force from his hand. To the
harpoon a line had been attached, which had been carefully coiled away
in the bows. This quickly ran out until the huge loggerhead turtle
which had been struck reached the bottom, when we hauled taut the line
and be