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Updated: June 22, 2025
Treenail and myself, and the two blackies on the top of her, rolling in our descent over, or rather into, another large mahogany tray which had just been carried out, with a tureen of turtle soup in it, and a dish of roast-beef, and platefuls of land-crabs, and the Lord knows what all besides.
We went up to some of these poor creatures, and ended their long agony; but there were many of them that we were obliged to leave to Nature. We saw no animals larger than a rat, but there were a great many of those eerie-looking land-crabs, that seemed as if almost humanly intelligent as they scampered about over the sand or through the undergrowth, busy about goodness knows what.
As they near the end of the field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them, they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead.
Very quiet it was ashore, so still and quiet that one could hear the bubbling, sucking noises of the large land-crabs, pattering over the black, oozy mud, or the sound of a lean pig scratching himself against the piles of a native hut, the clustered huts, mounted on stilts, of the village at the mouth of the creek. The Captain came down from the narrow bridge into the narrow saloon.
Men and women are busily engaged among the pools, fishing for land-crabs, mussels, and other freshwater shell-fish, with triangular nets. As my southward course brings me next day into the valley of the Hooghli River, the road partakes almost of the character of a tunnel burrowing through a mass of dense tropical vegetation.
Happily there was no want of water, turtles, goats, and land-crabs, which prevented any fear of dying of hunger before some ship should call at the island, and transport the shipwrecked sailors to their country. For this they had not long to wait, for on the 2nd of April an English vessel took them on board and carried them to England.
It looked as though a retreating army had fled along it, rather than that one troop had fought its way through it to the front. Except for the clatter of the land-crabs, those hideous orchid-colored monsters that haunt the places of the dead, and the whistling of the bullets in the trees, the place was as silent as a grave.
"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crabs and mangoes nothing like what you get at Chubb's. "We ate hearty and had another round of rum. "'It must be old Tecumseh's or whatever you call him birthday, says I. 'Or do they feed him every day?
An hour after this photograph was taken more than three thousand natives were assembled to witness the judging of the exhibits. In the small hours of night, the entire strand is covered with pita-oolas, or giant land-crabs, about the size of manhole covers, who crawl inland to cut down the palm trees with which they build their nests.
Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support.
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