Personal observation and inquiries from many men whose lives may be said to be spent among turtle on the Barrier Reef convince me that blacks never venture to get astride a turtle in the water.  One more daring and agile may seize a turtle, and by throwing his weight aft cause the head to tilt out of the water.  The turtle then strikes out frantically with its flippers, but the boy so counterbalances it that the head is kept above the surface continuously, until the turtle becoming exhausted is guided into shallow water or alongside a boat, where it is secured with the help of others.  Boys who accomplish this feat are few and far between, though it is by no means uncommon for a turtle to be seized while in the water and overturned, in which position it is helpless.  A turtle detected in shallow water falls a comparatively easy prey, for on being hustled it soon loses heart and endeavours to hide its head, ostrich-like, when it is easily captured.  None unacquainted with the skill with which the creature can spar with its flippers, and the effectiveness of these flippers, when used as weapons of defence, should venture to grip a turtle in its natural element.

Another species, stated to have a circumscribed habitat, has a steep dome-shaped back, resembling at a casual glance a seamless metal casting, with the edges abruptly turned up.  The head is large, the eyes deeply embedded in their sockets, and the animal has the power of protruding and withdrawing the head much more extensively developed than usual.  The “death’s head” staring from beneath the dome-shaped back gives to the animal a most gruesome aspect.  These details are supplied by the master of a beche-de-mer schooner, to whom all the nooks and corners of the Great Barrier Reef and of the other Coral Sea beyond, from New Guinea to New Caledonia, are familiar.  He says that the species, as far as his observation goes, is confined to the neighbourhood of one group of islands.  To others this is known as the “bastard tortoiseshell.”  The back is not actually seamless, but age causes the plates to cohere so closely as to present that appearance.

THE MERMAID OF TO-DAY

Dugong (HALICORE Australis) still frequent these waters.  The rapacity of the blacks is a rapidly diminishing factor in their extermination, and the rushing to and fro of steamers, which it was thought would scare away those which remain, is becoming too familiar to be fearsome.  Even in the narrow limits of Hinchinbrook Channel, through which the passing of steamers is of everyday occurrence, they still exist, though not in such numbers as in the early days.  It would seem that the waters within the Great Barrier Reef may long continue one of the last resorts of this strange, uncouth, paradoxical mammal.