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Some of our people went a little way up the river, where they found some small lakes containing remarkably fine white salt, of which they brought large quantities to the ships, laying in what store was thought necessary, as we did likewise of water. We found here great numbers of tortoises, or turtle, the shells of which were larger than a target.

To guard against such accidents Palissy invented some sort of cases 'lanterns' he calls them in which to put his pots while in the kiln, and these he found extremely useful. He now plucked up heart and began to model lizards and serpents, tortoises and lobsters, leaves and flowers, but it was a long while before he could turn them out as he wished.

About ten o'clock, in fact, the shawling processes commence; and servants are seen escorting home their padroni, holding lanterns carefully near the ground, to guard against the contingency of their stepping on the toads, which disport themselves in all the lanes at night, and are of the size of respectable tortoises.

In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here: I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life: I had nothing to covet, for I had all I was now capable of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor, or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of: there were no rivals: I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me; I might have raised ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion: I had tortoises or turtles enough; but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timber enough to have built a fleet of ships; I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when they had been built.

But their chief intent in going hither was to seek provisions, knowing the tortoises of those places are excellent food. Being arrived, they divided themselves, each party choosing a fit post for that fishery.

Tortoises were frequent in the river, basking on the rocks, and popping into the water when approached. On the 1st of March we left the Soane, and struck inland over a rough hilly country, covered with forest, fully 1000 feet below the top of the Kymore table-land, which here recedes from the river and surrounds an undulating plain, some ten miles either way, facing the south.

Being all come on board, they join together in council, concerning what place they ought first to go wherein to get provisions especially of flesh, seeing they scarce eat anything else. And of this the most common sort among them is pork. The next food is tortoises, which they are accustomed to salt a little.

The tortoises, therefore, which frequent the lower districts, when thirsty, are obliged to travel from a long distance. Hence broad and well-beaten paths branch off in every direction from the wells down to the sea-coast; and the Spaniards by following them up, first discovered the watering-places.

Caterpillars thus frozen will become butterflies in due time. Spiders, and many other creatures, lie torpid during the winter, and then revive in the same way as dormice, bears, and marmots do." "Nurse, please will you tell me something about tortoises and porcupines?" said Lady Mary. "I cannot tell you a great deal about the tortoise, my dear," replied her nurse.

"This prescription of mine is unlike all others. Besides, the very names of those drugs are quaint, and couldn't be enumerated in a moment; suffice it to mention the placenta of the first child; three hundred and sixty ginseng roots, shaped like human beings and studded with leaves; four fat tortoises; full-grown polygonum multiflorum; the core of the Pachyma cocos, found on the roots of a fir tree of a thousand years old; and other such species of medicines.