Besides turning turtles, which is of course confined strictly to a certain season, the fishermen of the reef resort to another method, called pegging. The instrument of capture is a three-sided peg, often made by cutting off the end of a file. This is attached to a long line and fitted into a copper cap on the end of a long pole, the whole constituting an unbarbed spear. Thus armed, the turtler sculls over the reef, striking the turtle either as it lies asleep on the bottom or as it rises to breathe. The peg is hurled long distances with great skill and accuracy: as soon as it strikes, the pole comes out, and the victim is managed by the line, often towing the dingy for a considerable distance. The peg holds by suction; and, as it only enters the hard shell, and that only half an inch, the animal is not in the least injured for transportation to the North.
Key West is the head quarters of the Florida turtling-trade, and on the north shore of the island, where a shoal reef stretches away, a number of crawls have been from time immemorial used, being merely fences or enclosures in which the animals are penned until the time for shipment. By far the greater number find their way to New York, being packed and crowded, often brutally, in the common fish-cars at the Fulton Market dock in such numbers that many are unable to rise, and consequently drown. The greatest injustice, however, to the long-suffering turtle comes when the miserable animal is propped up before some restaurant door, bearing upon its broad carapace the grim assertion, "To be served this day."
The green or loggerhead turtles are rarely seen north of Cape Florida. The outer reef is their home, their range extending far to the south. Old turtles, like fishes, often have strange companions. They are covered with barnacles of various kinds; several remoras form their body-guard, clinging here and there as if part and parcel of their huge consort. Often small fish allied to the mackerel accompany them, as does also the pilot-fish of the shark. One large loggerhead pegged by the writer had its four flippers bitten off by the latter fishes so close to the shell that it could barely move along, and would undoubtedly soon have succumbed, although it is a common thing to find both green and loggerhead turtles minus parts of their locomotive organs.
The great leather turtle (Sphurgis coriacea), the largest of the tribe, is rarely seen, being seemingly a denizen of the high seas, and more commonly observed in colder waters; though Gosse is authority for the statement that they form their nests on the island of Jamaica. The following account is from the Jamaica "Morning Journal" of April 13, 1846: "The anxiety of the fishermen in this little village was aroused on the 30th of last month by the track of a huge sea-monster, called a trunk-turtle, which came on the sea-beach for the purpose of laying her eggs. A search was made, when a hole in the sand was discovered, about four feet deep and as wide as the mouth of a half-barrel, whence five or six dozen white eggs were taken out; the eggs were of different sizes, the largest the size of a duck's egg. On the morning of the 10th of this month, at half-past five o'clock, she was discovered by Mr. Crow, on the beach, near the spot where she first came up; he gave the alarm, when all the neighbors assembled and got her turned on her back. She took twelve men to haul her about two hundred yards. I went and measured her, and found her dimensions as follows: from head to tail, six feet six inches; from the outer part of her fore fin to the other end" (to the tip of the other?), "nine feet two inches; the circumference round her back and chest, seven feet nine inches; circumference of her neck, three feet three inches; the widest part of her fore fins, eighteen inches; her hind fins, two feet four inches in length. Her back is formed like a round top of a trunk, with small white bumps in straight lines, resembling the nails on a trunk; her color is variegated like the rainbow" (probably the living skin displayed opaline reflections); "there is no shell on her back, but a thick skin, like pump-leather."
Some years since, a gigantic specimen came ashore at Lynn beach, where for a long time it formed an object of the greatest curiosity. It was over eight feet in length, and weighed nearly twenty-two hundred pounds. Instead of definite scales, as in other turtles, it had a shell composed of six plates, which formed longitudinal ridges extending from the head to the tail; the eye-openings were up and down, instead of lengthwise; the bill was hooked; and so many remarkable characteristics did it possess that many believed it to be a strange nondescript, and not a turtle.
It would not be surprising to find that such a creature was descended from a remarkable ancestry; and, following it up, we are led far into the early history of the later geological times, when all life seems to have attained its maximum growth; in fact, it was an era of giants. The map-maker of to-day would be astonished if confronted with the coast-line of that early time. The coast-country from Nova Scotia to Yucatan was all under water, and what are now our plains and prairies was a vast sea, that commenced where Texas now is and extended far to the northwest. Even now the old coast-line can be traced. We follow it along from Arkansas to near Fort Riley, on the Kansas River, then, extending eastward, it traverses Minnesota, extending into the British possessions to the head of Lake Superior, while its western shores are lost under the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Such was this great Cretaceous sea, in whose waters, with hundreds of other strange creatures, lived the ancestor of our leather tortoise. The ancient sea, however, disappeared; the land rose and surrounded it; the great forms died and became buried in the sediment, and finally the water all evaporated, leaving the bottom high and dry,—an ancient grave-yard, that can be visited on horseback or by the cars.
What is now known as the State of Kansas is one of the most favored spots, and here, embedded in the earth, have been found the remains of these huge forms. The bones were first seen projecting from a bluff, and, gradually worked out, proved to be those of a gigantic turtle that must have measured across its back from flipper to flipper fifteen feet, while its entire length must have been twenty feet or more. The name of this giant is the Protostega gigas, a fitting forefather for the great leather turtle of to-day. In some parts of the West the hardened shells of other and smaller turtles are scattered about in great confusion. Nearly all have been turned to stone, and, thus preserved, form a monument of this past time.
A number of years ago some natives in Southern India were engaged in making an excavation under the superintendence of an English officer, when they discovered the remains of one of the largest fossil turtles ever found. They had penetrated the soil for several feet, when their implements struck against a hard substance which was at first supposed to be solid rock, but a bar sank through it, showing it to be either bone or wood. The earth being carefully removed, the remains of a mound-shaped, adobe structure gradually appeared. The natives thought it a house; but the Englishman saw that they had come upon the remains of some gigantic creature of a past age. Every precaution was taken, and finally the shell was fully exposed. The restoration shows it as dome-shaped, nearly fourteen feet long, thirty-three feet in horizontal circumference, and twenty feet in girth in a vertical direction. Its length when alive must have been nearly thirty feet, and its feet were as large as those of a rhinoceros. The capacity of the shell of this ancient boatman was such that six or seven persons could have found protection within it. Its name is Colossochelys atlas, a land-tortoise of the Miocene time of geology. Its nearest representatives of to-day are, if not so large, equally marvellous in their general appearance. They are found in the Galapagos and Mascarene Islands, and some of them are seven feet in length, with high domed and plated shells, presenting the appearance of miniature houses moving along. A single shell would form a perfect covering for a child. There are five distinct species found here, each inhabiting a different island. Chatham Island, the home of some, seems completely honeycombed with black truncated volcano cones that spring up everywhere, while masses of lava cover the ground, having been blown into weird and fantastic shapes when soft.
In among the cones low underbrush and cacti grow, and feeding upon these are found the great tortoises, which at the approach of danger draw in their heads with a loud hiss or move slowly and clumsily away. Their strength is enormous. A small one, three feet long, carried the writer along a hard floor with perfect ease, and one of the largest would probably not be inconvenienced by a weight of five hundred pounds. They attain a great age, often living, it is said, a hundred years or more.
While we have been digressing, the turtles have been dumped into the great moat that surrounds the fort, and, stretched upon the deck, the sable crew are fast asleep. The writer has been watching a large three-master moving along two or three miles beyond Loggerhead Key. Our attention is distracted for some time, and, upon looking again, we find that she has not moved, and impart the fact to Sandy, who looks steadily through his long spy-glass, evidently made up of several others; then, gazing intently over the top, he brings all hands to their feet by the cry of "Wrack!" For Sandy is a licensed "wracker."