Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/163

Wellesley's Islands.]

light than they made for the water, and with speed, as if conscious that the bustards were watching them; when placed in a direction from the sea, which was done for experiment, they turned themselves and took the straightest course to the water side. But it is not only in the bustards, nor on land alone, that they have enemies to fear; tiger sharks were numerous, and so voracious, that seven were hooked along-side the ship, measuring from five to nine feet in length. These were ready to receive such of the little animals as escape their first enemies; and even one of the full grown turtle had lost a semicircular piece, equal to the tenth part of its bulk, which had been bitten out of its side; and what seemed more extraordinary, the shell had closed, and the place was healed up. Were it not for the immense destruction made of these animals in the different stages of their existence, and that food must in the end fail, their fecundity is such, that all the tropical seas and shores would scarcely afford room for them in a few years. The number of eggs found in the females, and there were few, if any males amongst the forty-six taken here, usually ran from four to seven hundred; and in one weighing 459 lbs, taken earlier in the following season, the number of eggs counted was 1940, as recorded in lieutenant Fowler's journal; but many were not bigger, some not so large as peas. They seem to lay from twenty to a hundred eggs at once, and this is done many times in the season; after which they go very little on shore. In Terra Australis, the season appears to commence in August, and to terminate in January or February.

The latitude of our anchorage, one mile from the south-east side of Bountiful Island, was 16° 41′ south. Lieutenant Flinders observed six sets of lunar distances, which gave 139° 46′ 18″ east longitude; but the time keeper No. 543 made it 14½′ east of Inspection Hill, or in 139° 59½′. The variation of the compass, from azimuth and amplitude observed with the ship's head in the magnetic meridian, was 3° 46′ east; and at my station on shore, an amplitude with the theodolite gave 3° 47′ east. From a little past ten in the morning