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If I should kill the jaguar the manatee would escape, and their object was to allow the latter to be too exhausted to do so, and then to shoot the jaguar. Now it appeared as if the jaguar would drag the water-monster out of its native element, now that the former would be drawn into it. The sea-cow struggled bravely, but the beast of prey had got too firm a hold to let it escape.
By the early Dutch voyagers it was, without any obvious analogy, called the sea-cow; and from the circumstance of the head being covered with a kind of shaggy hair, and the mammae of the female being placed immediately under the pectus, it has given rise to the stories of mermaids in the tropical seas.
An enormous mammal, more than three tons in weight, with hind quarters like a whale, snout and fore fins resembling a cow, grazed in herds on the fields of sea-kelp and gazed languidly without fear on the newcomer Man. This was the famous sea-cow described by the enthusiastic Steller, but long since extinct.
It is not only guessing that makes us say these animals lived in England, for here are the real skulls and skeletons actually found buried in the earth. Further on is what is called a sea-cow, a great fat beast weighing an enormous amount, which floated in the sea. And at the end of the room is one of the strangest of animals.
I suspected, it is true, that they would not be proof against further attacks, still, I hoped that they would last for some time, as indeed proved to be the case. In the event of the beasts failing us, we took also ten of the best of those Strathmuir men who had accompanied us on the sea-cow trip, to serve as bearers when it became necessary.
Some term it the "sea-cow," but this is an improper name for it, since it also inhabits fresh-water rivers throughout all tropical America. It is known as the Manati, and the Portuguese call it "peixe boi," which is only "fish-cow" done into Portuguese. It is a curious creature the fish-cow, and I shall offer you a short description of it.
The natives dress it by cutting the meat into small pieces and sticking them on skewers, which they place in a slanting position over the flames to roast. The female produces one, though sometimes two at a birth, which she holds in her paddles while giving suck. From twenty to twenty-five gallons of oil are obtained from each sea-cow.
The boats usually sailed in the fall, and wintered on Bering Island. Here stores of salted meat, sea-lion and sea-cow, were laid up, and the following spring the ship steered for the Aleutians, or the main coast of Alaska, or the archipelago round the modern Sitka. Sloops were anchored offshore fully armed for refuge in case of attack. Huts were then constructed of driftwood on land.
The girls had a glimpse of something like a seal, with a queer head, not unlike that of a small hippopotamus. "Look!" cried Mollie. "That was no alligator! What in the world is it?" "That's a manatee a sea-cow, some folks call 'em!" answered the ragged youth, as he poled his boat toward them, towing the Gem. "They're harmless, but I had to shoot this one to make him let go. I didn't hurt him much.
Fortunately, it was literally swarming with animal life the great manatee or sea-cow in herds on the kelp-beds, blue foxes in thousands, the seal rookeries that were to make the islands famous; but there was no timber to build houses for wintering in. It was a barren island. They could make floors of sand, walls of peat, roofs of sea-moss; but what shelter was this against northern gales?
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