Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/298

266 must be kept up for three days, after which this leathery and uninviting delicacy is packed in palm-leaf baskets ready for the China market. But it must from time to time be spread in the scorching sun to dry it more thoroughly, as any lingering moisture will inevitably reveal itself on the long journey, and the produce of many a month's hard labour has thus been rendered worthless.

I do not think that bêche-de-mer soup ever finds much favour with Europeans, but I have eaten it myself with much satisfaction, which is far more than I can say for turtle in any form, as prepared in the Pacific. Turtle-steaks sound well, but I cannot say they are nice. I think they are generally cut from turtle which have been roasted whole in native ovens. I believe the scientific cook invariably lays the turtle on its back, that the precious green fat and oil may not be lost; and the prudent housekeeper preserves the surplus of a feast-day, by cutting up slices of turtle-steak, which she stores in cocoa-nut shells, pouring in liquid fat, and tying a heated banana-leaf over the shell, in lieu of hermetically sealing these potted meats. As a good large turtle weighs fully 400 lb. (and some are occasionally captured weighing from 600 to 700 lb.), you can understand that a chief may very well allow himself to store up a portion for the morrow, without depriving his followers of their fair share.

But if turtle-meat is unpleasant, still more so, to my uneducated taste, are turtle-eggs, several hundred of which are sometimes found inside a large mother turtle. But they are generally discovered carefully buried in the sand well above high-water mark. They are quite round and leathery, resembling small white tennis-balls. In the breeding season, the female turtle leaves her mate beyond the barrier-reef, and she comes ashore, alone, at high tide, generally selecting the full moon. Having chosen a suitable spot for her nest, she scratches a large hole in the sand, in the middle of which she digs a funnel, two or three feet in depth, and therein proceeds to lay about a hundred eggs, after which she carefully covers them over with sand, and smooths away all trace of her visit. Then she returns to the reef and there waits for the next high tide, when she rejoins her mate. For some reason best