22 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



own species which is honoured with the image of God, who 

 made man lord of all creatures, and that, consequently, we 

 may suppose he is entitled to a noble and heavenly form 

 which other creatures must not partake of," he thinks " its 

 force vanishes when we consider the form of apes, and 

 especially of another African creature called ' Ouoyas 

 Morrov ' described by Odoard Dapper " in his work on 

 Africa, and which appears to have been a chimpanzee. 

 Pontoppidan regarded it as being the Satyr of the ancients. 

 He therefore claims that " if we will not allow our 

 Norwegian Hastromber the honourable name of merman, 

 we may very well call it the ' Sea-ape,' or the ' Sea- 

 Quoyas-Morrov ; ' especially as the author already quoted 

 says that, " in the Sea of Angola mermaids are frequently 

 caught which resemble the human species. They are taken 

 in nets, and killed by the negroes, and are heard to shriek 

 and cry like women." 



The Bishop adds that in the diocese of Bergen, as well 

 as in the manor of Nordland, there were hundreds of 

 persons who affirmed with the strongest assurances that 

 they had seen this kind of creature ; sometimes at a distance 

 and at other times quite close to their boats, standing 

 upright, and formed like a human creature down to the 

 middle — the rest they could not see — but of those who had 

 seen them out of water and handled them he had not been 

 able to find more than one person of credit who could vouch 

 it for truth. This informant, " the Reverend Mr. Peter 

 Angel, minister of Vand-Elvens Gield, on Suderoe," 

 assured his bishop, when he was on a visitation journey, 

 that "in the year 17 19, he (being then about twenty years 

 old) saw what is called a merman lying dead on a point of 

 land near the sea, which had been cast ashore by the waves 

 along with several sea-calves (seals), and other dead fish. 



