Note (return) — Chapter XIV · VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, BY CAPTAIN GEORGE ANSON, IN THE YEARS 1740-1744.1 (continued 3)

We killed many of these animals for food, particularly for their hearts and tongues, which we esteemed exceeding good eating, and preferable even to those of bullocks. In general there was no difficulty in killing them, as they are incapable either of flight or resistance, their motion being the most unwieldy that can be imagined, and all the time they are in motion, their blubber is agitated in large waves under the skin. One day, a sailor being carelessly employed in skinning a young sea-lion, the female from whom he had taken it, came upon him unperceived, and getting his head into her mouth, scored his skull in notches with her teeth in many places, and wounded him so desperately that he died in a few days, though all possible care was taken of him.3