back-shell

Updated: May 12, 2025

The land-tortoises laid eggs on our deck; and our men brought many of them from the land, pure white, and as large as a goose's egg, with a strong thick shell, exactly round. These are the ugliest creatures that can well be imagined, the back-shell being not unlike the top of an old hackney-coach, as black as jet, and covered with a rough shrivelled skin.

Robert Kerr - A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 10 : Arranged in systematic order: Forming a complete history of the origin and progress of navigation, discovery, and commerce, by sea and land, from the earliest ages to the present time.

The woodcut annexed will convey at once to the reader, those singular features in the hills the low line of cliffs resembling fortifications near their summit, and, still more remarkable, the horizontal black streaks near their base. We here found the back-shell of one of the largest of the water-tortoises, from which the reach was named.

John Lort Stokes - Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers: Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in The: Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners: Of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits: To the Islands in the Arafura Sea