1 6 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



Jesus, mentions that the annalist of the exploits of the 

 Jesuits in India gravely records that seven of these 

 monsters, male and female, were captured at Manaar, in 

 1560, and carried to Goa, where they were dissected by 

 Demas Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy, "and their 

 internal structure found to be in all respects conformable to 

 the human." He also quotes Valentyn, one of the Dutch 

 colonial chaplains, who, in his account of the Natural History 

 of Amboyna,* embodied in his great work on the Nether- 

 lands' possessions in India, published in I727,t devoted 

 the first section of his chapter on the fishes of that island 

 to a minute description of the " Zee-Menschen," " Zee- 

 Wyven," and mermaids, the existence of which he warmly 

 insists on as being beyond cavil. He relates that in 1663, 

 when a lieutenant in the Dutch service was leading a party 

 of soldiers along the sea-shore in Amboyna, he and all his 

 company saw the mermen swimming at a short distance 

 from the beach. They had long and flowing hair of a 

 colour between grey and green. Six weeks afterwards the 

 creatures were again seen by him and more than fifty 

 witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight. " If any 

 narrative in the world," adds Valentyn, " deserves credit it 

 is this ; since not only one, but two mermen together were 

 seen by so many eye-witnesses. Should the stubborn 

 world, however, hesitate to believe it, it matters nothing, 

 as there are people who would even deny that such cities 

 as Rome, Constantinople, or Cairo, exist, merely because 

 they themselves have not happened to see them. But 

 what are such incredulous persons," he continues, " to make 



* One of the Dutch spice-islands in the Banda Sea, between Celebes 

 and Papua. 



t Beschrijving van Oud en Nicuw Oost-Indien, etc., 5 vols, folio, 

 Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1727, vol. iii. p. 330. 



