Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/354

340 bird, the size of a swan, has a round tail, covered with two or three curly tufts, has no wings, but instead of them there are three or four black tufts: of these birds we caught a certain number.... We cooked the bird; it was so leathery that we could not boil it enough, but we ate it half raw."

In 1601 two Dutch squadrons, one commanded by Hovmansz, the other by Van Heemskerk, sailed together from the East Indies on their return to Europe. The vessels soon parted, those of Heemskerk anchored at the island of Mauritius, and this time the crews found the dodo remarkably good eating. They probably understood better than Van Neck's men how to prepare them, and those they killed were perhaps fatter or younger. They ate a great number, and salted others down for the remainder of their voyage. Other birds abounded in the island, but were less easily caught than the great dodos, which had no power to fly, and no other means of defense than their huge bills. In the years following, Dutch navigators often landed at the Mauritius, and the dodos, killed with clubs by the sailors, always furnished a large part of the crews' provision; they worked zealously for the destruction of the poor birds, unable to escape pursuit. The Englishman, Sir Thomas Herbert, visiting the island in 1627, found the dodo still there; and Francis Cauche, a French sailor, author of the narrative of a voyage to Madagascar, touching at Mauritius in 1638, also saw there the dodo, or, as he called it, the nazar-bird, which builds its nest from a heap of grasses, on the ground. About the same date, a living dodo was exhibited in London: fortunately, artists took the opportunity to draw from nature the likeness of this strange bird, and the Dutch painter, Roelandt Savery, in particular, depicted it under various aspects. In this way the general appearance of this extinct species has been preserved for us. After the death of the one brought alive to England, it was stuffed, and at last found a place in the museum founded at Oxford by Ashmole.

Up to 1644 Mauritius Island, pretty frequently visited by navigators, had remained unpeopled; but in that year the Dutch founded a colony in it. Such an establishment of course brought about the extinction of the dodo, in which the dogs, cats, and pigs, introduced into the country, no doubt did their part by eating the young and the eggs. The last evidence of the dodo's existence dates in 1681; it is given by the log of an English sailor named Harry, aboard a vessel that wintered at Mauritius, homeward bound from India. In this document, preserved among the manuscripts of, the British Museum, the dodo is mentioned as having very tough flesh. And here the first part of the strange creature's history ends.

In 1693 the French naturalist Leguat pursued for several months an exploration of Mauritius Island. He describes a number of animals seen in the country, but he neither met with the dodo, nor did any one speak of it to him. The bird was extinct, and all attempts to