- end_line
- 6111
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6058
- text
- Some months before my first stepping ashore upon the group, my ship was
cruising in its close vicinity. One noon we found ourselves off the
South Head of Albemarle, and not very far from the land. Partly by way
of freak, and partly by way of spying out so strange a country, a
boat’s crew was sent ashore, with orders to see all they could, and
besides, bring back whatever tortoises they could conveniently
transport.
It was after sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down over
the ship’s high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, and
dimly saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight.
Ropes were dropt over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking
tortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed
hardly of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five
long months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land
wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom-house
officers boarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have
curiously stared at them, felt of them, and stroked them much as
savages serve civilized guests. But instead of three custom-house
officers, behold these really wondrous tortoises—none of your schoolboy
mud-turtles—but black as widower’s weeds, heavy as chests of plate,
with vast shells medallioned and orbed like shields, and dented and
blistered like shields that have breasted a battle, shaggy, too, here
and there, with dark green moss, and slimy with the spray of the sea.
These mystic creatures, suddenly translated by night from unutterable
solitudes to our peopled deck, affected me in a manner not easy to
unfold. They seemed newly crawled forth from beneath the foundations of
the world. Yea, they seemed the identical tortoises whereon the Hindoo
plants this total sphere. With a lantern I inspected them more closely.
Such worshipful venerableness of aspect! Such furry greenness mantling
the rude peelings and healing the fissures of their shattered shells. I
no more saw three tortoises. They expanded—became transfigured. I
seemed to see three Roman Coliseums in magnificent decay.
Ye oldest inhabitants of this, or any other isle, said I, pray, give me
the freedom of your three-walled towns.
The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of
age:—dateless, indefinite endurance. And in fact that any other
creature can live and breathe as long as the tortoise of the
Encantadas, I will not readily believe. Not to hint of their known
capacity of sustaining life, while going without food for an entire
year, consider that impregnable armor of their living mail. What other
bodily being possesses such a citadel wherein to resist the assaults of
Time?
As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient
scars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly
mountains of the isle—scars strangely widened, swollen, half
obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of
very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the
bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible
creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.
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