But that method is
not generally approved. Professional tortoiseshell-getters either trust
to the heat of the sun or bury the shell in clean sand, and when
decomposition sets in, the valuable plates are detached freely. Exposure
to fire deteriorates the quality of the product unless great care is
exercised.
The green turtle, with thin dovetailing plates, is the most plentiful
and valued principally for food. But all green turtle are not acceptable.
An old bull is so rank, that "there is no living near it--it would infect
the North Star!" There are many Europeans who cannot relish even good
green turtle, however tender, delicate, and sweet it may be. The worthy
chaplain of Anson's fleet who "wrote up" the famous voyages, has some
shrewd observations on the subject of green turtle, which he refers to
as the most delicious of all flesh, "so very palatable and salubrious,"
though proscribed by the Spaniards as unwholesome and little less than
poisonous. He suggests that the strange appearance of the animal may
have been the foundation of "this ridiculous and superstitious aversion."
Perhaps the poor Spaniards of those days happened in the first instance
upon an ancient bull, or a hawks-bill, and tapped the poison gland, or a
loggerhead or a luth, and came ever after to entertain, with right good
cause, a holy terror of turtle, irrespective of species.
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