Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Yet, Formerly, Whole
Tribes From The Atabapo And The Cassiquiare Have Been Known To Pass
The Cataracts, In Order To Take Part In The Fishery At Uruana.
The terekay is less than the arrau.
It is in general only fourteen
inches in diameter. The number of plates in the upper shell is the
same, but they are somewhat differently arranged. I counted three in
the centre of the disk, and five hexagonal on each side. The margins
contain twenty-four, all quadrangular, and much curved. The upper
shell is of a black colour inclining to green; the feet and claws are
like those of the arrau. The whole animal is of an olive-green, but it
has two spots of red mixed with yellow on the top of the head. The
throat is also yellow, and furnished with a prickly appendage. The
terekays do not assemble in numerous societies like the arraus, to lay
their eggs in common, and deposit them upon the same shore. The eggs
of the terekay have an agreeable taste, and are much sought after by
the inhabitants of Spanish Guiana. They are found in the Upper
Orinoco, as well as below the cataracts, and even in the Apure, the
Uritucu, the Guarico, and the small rivers that traverse the Llanos of
Caracas. The form of the feet and head, the appendages of the chin and
throat, and the position of the anus, seem to indicate that the arrau,
and probably the terekay also, belong to a new subdivision of the
tortoises, that may be separated from the emydes.
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