a great part of the subsistence of the inhabitants of the Bahama Islands; for which purpose they visit many of the remote kayes and islands in their sloops to catch them, which they do by dogs trained up for that purpose, and which are so dexterous as not often to kill them. If they do so, however, the Guanas serve only for present use; if otherwise, they sew up their mouths to prevent their biting, and put them into the hold of their sloop, until they have obtained a sufficient number, which they either carry alive for sale to Carolina, or salt and barrel up for the use of their families at home. These Guanas feed wholly on vegetables and fruit, especially on a particular kind of fungus growing at the roots of trees, and on the fruits of the different kinds of Ananas: their flesh is easy of digestion, delicate, and well tasted. They are sometimes roasted, but the more common mode is to boil them, taking out the fat, which is melted and clarified and put into a dish, into which they dip the flesh of the Guana as they eat it. Though not amphibious, they are said to keep under water above an hour. They cannot run fast, and their holes are a greater security to them than their heels. They are so impatient of cold that they rarely appear out of their holes but when the sun shines.”[1]
Brown, in his “History of Jamaica” (1756), says that the Guana lives for a considerable time without food, and changes its colour with the weather, or the natural moisture of its place of residence. “I have kept,” he adds, “a grown Guana about the house for more than two months: it was very fierce and ill-natured at the beginning,
- ↑ “Natural History of Carolina,” &c.
