dodo - Dodos and solitaires

http://www.messybeast.com/extinct/dodo-solitaire.htm

In 1598, Cornelius Van Neck made Mauritius a Dutch possession and it became an important stopover for Dutch ships on long journeys across the Indian ocean. Crews slaughtered the birds in their hundreds for sport; the meat also made a welcome change from ship's rations. A Dutch captain reported: "We lived on Tortoises, Dodos, (Pink and Blue) Pigeons, Grey Parrots and other game, which the crews caught by hand." Of these creatures, only the Mauritian Pink Pigeon remains, and its numbers are critically low.

The importance of Mauritius grew quickly and in 1599 an English report said: "This Island being situate to the East of Madagascar, and containing as much in compasse as all Holland, is a very high, goodly and pleasant land, full of green and fruitful vallies, and replenished with Palmito-trees, from wich droppeth holesome wine. Likewise here are very many trees of right Ebenwood as black as jet and smooth and hard as the very Ivory; and the quantity of this wood is so exceeding that many ships may be laden therewith. For to sail into this haven you must bring the two highest mountains one over the other, leaving five small islands on your right hand; and so you may enter in upon 30 fadomes of water. Lying in the bay they had 10, 12 and 14 fadoms. On their left hand was a little island which they named Hemskerk Island."

In spite of the birds being bad eating, men made sport of bludgeoning the docile dodo, and at first there were plenty of birds around. In1602 Captain Willem van West-Zanen recorded that his men killed "24 or 25 Dod-aarsen, so big and heavy that scarcely two were consumed at meal-time, and all that were remaining flung into salt."