But now a huge mass lay at my feet. I had seen it fall. It was still hot. The boughs of the tamarind tree lay scattered about in every direction. How could I doubt any longer? Was it reasonable to deny facts, before my eyes, because I could not account for them?
Do you wish to know if I can account for them now? Not a whit better. The moon, some say, has volcanic mountains which throw them out. But I don’t believe it. Think what an immense force of pressure it must take to send up a huge stone from one of our volcanoes, quite beyond the sphere of the earth’s attraction, so as to be met by the attraction of the moon and be carried to it! Do you believe such a thing could ever happen?
Nearly all we know about it is briefly this. Heavy bodies, of every variety of size, from an ounce to 300 pound’s weight, have at different times fallen from the atmosphere. These heavy bodies are really composed of earth and metals. They all contain the same substances, though sometimes varying a little in the proportions; viz. iron, nickel, manganese, silica or silex, sulphur, magnesia and lime.
Perhaps I ought to add that though I know nothing more about these wonderful phenomena, it is more generally believed that these substances are formed in the vast regions of the atmosphere, by causes unknown except to Him who created the atmosphere, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”
Soon after my last adventure I arrived at the Mission villages on the banks of the river Orinoco. Here I met with a Spanish gentleman of distinction, by the name of Don Calao. He was a merchant, and sold monkeys, mackaws, turtles’ eggs, &c., very odd things for a man to trade with, as I then thought. I have something to say about turtles’ eggs in my next letter.
THE HARVEST OF TURTLE’S EGGS.
You would wonder how there could be any turtles remaining in South America, if you were to see the thousands and thousands that are destroyed by the Indians every year, at the Harvest of Eggs, as they call it. I attended one of these hunts or harvests, one day, with Don Calao the merchant, and saw the whole process.
We all went in a boat, early one morning, to an Island in the river, where the sand was smooth, and which the tide had left bare. A person then took a long pole, and walked about, thrusting it into the sand, in every direction, and wherever it penetrated easily, he knew there was a nest of turtle’s eggs. So then they dug down, and when they found any, they put them in a basket which they brought for the purpose.
Numbers of Indians were there, from all the neighboring shores, and immense numbers of eggs were collected. They make a kind of oil of the yolk, which is used in cooking, as well as for burning in their houses.