LA GRANDE CARAPACE

The Ile has no humane inhabitants. Those creatures that possesse it, have it on condition to pay tribute to such ships as famine, or foule weather force to anchor there. Here are land Tortoyses so great that they will creepe with two men’s burthen, and serve more for sport than service or solemne Banquet.

Sir Thomas Herbert, who gave us the first descriptions of the Dodo in English, also wrote this early account of the similarly doomed Mauritius Giant Tortoises. There were two species of giant tortoise on Mauritius, but sadly Herbert was quite wrong about them being unpalatable. The French and Portuguese slaughtered tens of thousands for meat for their crews on their Indian Ocean ships. On Mauritius, one Abbé Pengré noted that, while on the island, his diet consisted entirely of “soupe de tortue, tortue enficasee, tortes en doube, tortue en godiveau, oeufs de tortue, foie de tortue, tells etaient Presque nos unique ragouts.” Predictably, both species soon became extinct.

Curiously, after his return to England, Sir Thomas Herbert became embroiled in the civil war (on the side of Cromwell), and found himself watching over another endangered species: the British monarchy. Herbert was appointed servant and jailer to the imprisoned Charles I. During the King’s last months, Herbert was the monarch’s sole attendant, and accompanied the King to the scaffold. Later, after the phoenix-like resurrection of the monarchy, Herbert was made a baronet by Charles II for his kindness toward Charles I, and wrote his compassionate Threnodia Carolina – Last Days of Charles I. The Threnodia was published in 1678, a date that almost exactly coincides with the extinction of Herbert’s Dodo, and is within two decades of the same fate befalling the Mauritius Tortoises.

REUNION GIANT TORTOISES – 1773
Cylindraspis indica; Cylindraspis borboica

Marquis Henri Du Quesne – 1689
Memoire – Projet de Republique a L’ile Eden, Reunion

There are vast numbers of Tortoises: their flesh is very delicate and the fat better than butter or the best oil, for all kinds of sauces which is also a good remedy for many ills. The biggest ones can carry a man with greater ease than a man can carry them. Each animal usually makes two pots of oil and twenty people can be fed from one of these turtles.

Here the Marquis Henri Du Quesne writes glowingly of one of the many bounteous natural treasures awaiting colonists he is commissioned to transport to the L’ile Eden – or Reunion – the largest of the three Mascarene islands. As on Mauritius, the two species of Giant Tortoise on Reunion were slaughtered in the thousands to supply meat for traders.

However, this new Eden for the exiled and endangered Huguenots failed. In fact, Du Quesne was the naval commander of the frigate La Hirondelle, whom Francois Leguat accuses of abandoning the colonists (including himself) on the uninhabited Rodriguez.

To give some idea of the number of giant tortoises once inhabiting these islands, it should be observed that in the widely scattered array of islands in the Seychelles Group, there is the tiny islet of Aldabra Atoll. Measuring less than eighteen by seven miles (most of which is a lagoon), it was inhabited by over one hundred thousand tortoises. Uninhabited by humans and without a safe harbour or sufficient fresh water, Aldabra was the habitat of the only surviving species of Indian Ocean Tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantean).

RODRIGUEZ GIANT TORTOISES – 1800
Cylindraspis vosmaeri; Cylindraspis peltastes

Francois Leguat of Bresse – 1708
A New Voyage to the East Indies, Rodriguez

There are such plenty of Land Turtles on this Isle, that sometimes you see 2-3000 of them in a Flock; so that you can go above a hundred paces on their backs without setting foot on the ground. They meet together in the evening in shady places, and lie so close, that one would think those spots were paved with them.… We all unanimously agreed ’twas better than the best Butter in Europe. To anoint one’s self with this Oil is an excellent Remedy for Surfeits, Colds, Cramps, and several other Distempers. The Liver of the animal is extraordinarily delicate, ’tis so Delicious that one may say of it, it always carries its own Sauce with it, dress it how you will.

During the reign of Louis XIV, Francois Leguat was forced to flee to Holland, where, in 1691, along with other Huguenots, he was persuaded to establish a new Protestant Colony in the “New Eden” of Reunion. They were promised two ships, but instead were deserted on Rodriguez.

In 1693, after two years as the only inhabitants on an island 40 miles square, they built a boat and sailed to Mauritius, where they were imprisoned before they escaped to Batavia, where they were once again imprisoned. When finally released by the Dutch after seven years, Leguat and two others were the only survivors of L’ile Eden.

Mahé de Labourdonnais – 1730
French East India Company Decree , Rodriguez

All ship’s captains must be forbidden to send out their boats to collect tortoises without informing the island commandants and stating the numbers they require.

Though pirates and occasional Dutch naval ships had been taking tortoises from Rodriguez for some time, it was not until Leguat’s memoirs were published in 1708 that the island came to be regarded as a meat reservoir for the French and English navies. By 1730, Reunion Tortoises were becoming scarce and the Mauritian herds had entirely vanished. This decree was made – not so much to preserve the island tortoises – as to attempt to enforce a monopoly on their harvesting. In any case, the decree was ignored and the tortoise populations continued to rapidly plummet.

Rodriguez was later re-colonized by the Mauritius governor Mahé de Labourdonnais with a small group of soldiers, lascars and slaves who were required to gather live tortoises. They sent 10,000 tortoises off annually. Some shiploads were of 6,000 tortoises and on several occasions three quarters of the cargo perished. The last big haul was in January 1768 when L’Heureux took off 1215 “carosses” (the largest size tortoises).

In 1791, the last overseer, Jean de Valgny, died on Rodriguez, a virtual castaway dependent for food for himself and two slaves largely on the generosity of visiting ships. For the tortoises were gone and, with them, went France’s interest in Rodriguez. The last tortoises ever seen were two down at the bottom of an inaccessible ravine in 1795.

MARION’S GIANT TORTOISE – 1929 Cylindraspis sumeri

Albert Gunther – 1875
**Letter to The Times, London**

As to the origin of the large tortoise – known as Marion’s Tortoise – living in Mauritius… I am afraid positive evidence will be obtained only when, after the death of the animal, the bones can be compared with those of the other Mascarene tortoises. But I trust that great care will be taken in prolonging the existence of one of the oldest terrestrial creatures and, probably, the last of its race.

Marion’s Tortoise was named after Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne who was a renowned naval officer, trader and explorer. In 1766, the Chevalier Marion brought this captive tortoise from Reunion to Mauritius. There in Port Louis the captain served as harbour master, and upon his departure, placed the tortoise in the care of the French Garrison. Marion’s Tortoise remained there until 1810, when the British bombarded Port Louis and forced a French surrender. During the attack, Marion’s Tortoise was wounded – scarring its shell – but fortunately recovered to serve as the British Royal Artillery mascot for another half century before it came to the attention of Albert Gunther of the zoology department of the British Museum through correspondence with Captain Samuel Pasfield Oliver who served as an artillery officer on Mauritius.

In the months following his letter to The Times, Albert Gunther received photographs and numerous reliable accounts that proved beyond doubt that Marion’s Tortoise was indeed the last living Mascarene Tortoise – and probably the only one still living after 1800. It was largely due to Gunther’s persistence in gathering the public support of Walter Baron Rothschild, Sir Joseph Hooker, Richard Owen and Charles Darwin that any Giant Land Tortoises elsewhere in the world survived into the twentieth century.

Marion’s Tortoise lived on as the Royal Artillery mascot until 1929, when he died as the result of a fall down a well. He had been in captivity for 163 years. His actual age is unknown, but as he was brought to Mauritius as a large mature adult, he must have survived for at least two entire centuries.

METHUSELAH’S TURTLE

Marion’s Giant Tortoise – 1929

In the year 1929, Marion’s Tortoise

Suffered a fatal fall

He was two hundred years old

If he was a day, when he toppled

From the Mauritian garrison’s parapet

Who among us could imagine

What it was like?

Death is before me today

Like the sweet scent of myrrh

Rising from a thorn tree in the desert

In 1766, a decade before the American Revolution –

Already full-grown and the last of his race –

He was brought from the Isle of Rodriguez

To the garrison by the Chevalier de Marion

He outlived the last of the Bourbon Kings,

The Emperor Napoleon on his lonely isle,

Bismarck, and Queen Victoria

He kept an even keel

Even as the Titanic turned turtle

And survived the years of the Great War

That ended the power of the Kaiser,

The Ottomans and the Russian Czars

Death is before me today

Like a strong wind filling

The sails of a great ship

To the French and English in the garrison

He was the soldier’s mascot: the embodiment

Of steadfastness and endurance

And the island’s Hindu lascars and slaves

Had an ancient legend ready-made for him:

He was Chukwa, the Great Tortoise

Upon whose back was heaped

The weight of the whole world

And perhaps from their own enslavement

Through generations of exile and captivity,

They understood something of his suffering

Death is before me today

Like the desire of an ancient prisoner

To see his home again

The Tortoise’s fall

Was an unlikely accident

Blind or not, after a century and a half

The garrison’s corridors were no mystery

His own time had long passed

The weight of the world

Did indeed rest upon his back

The air above his carapace was empty

Yet heavier for all that with the weight of time

Not quite the immortal Chukwa

He was not the Spiritus Mundi

Not the footstool of Venus

Not Methuselah’s Pet

But only a lonely mortal tortoise

It was time to join the others

This was the end of his race

It was time to see his home again