INTRODUCTION. 55 



its song and the clapping of its wings, announces the moment when the hour expires ; and as the 

 song ceases, a hell is heard to strike the hour — during which operation, a mouse comes out of a 

 grotto and runs over the hill. * * * * Every separate part was nicely executed ; hut the 

 hird was too large for the tree, and the sun for the sky, while the mouse scaled the mountain 

 in a moment of time." Whatever may have heeu the defects of taste, the ingenuity and skill 

 in this piece of mechanism are very apparent. 



Fischer also tells us a story of the ingenuity of a Japanese fisherman, of which, perhaps, the 

 specimen may now he found among ourselves. The Japanese, like many other people of lively 

 temperaments, have a passion for things that are strange and odd, and rather prefer sometimes 

 to he gulled. This fisherman, availing himself of this passion, contrived to unite the upper 

 half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish, so neatly as to defy ordinary inspection. He then 

 announced that he had caught a strange animal alive in his net, but that the creature had soon 

 died when taken out of the water, and invited his countrymen to come, and, for a consideration, 

 to see the curiosity. After he had put money in his purse to some considerable extent by this 

 bold reliance on human credulity, he improved on the original story, and said that during the 

 few moments of its life the strange creature had spoken to him, (whether in the language of 

 Japan or in that of the Fee-jee islands, he did not say,) and had jDredicted a certain number of 

 years of great fertility, to be followed or accompanied by a most fatal epidemic ; and that 

 against this last the only remedy would be the possession of a likeness of the marine nondescript, 

 half human half fish. Pictures of the mermaid were forthwith in demand, and the sale was 

 immense. Presently, as the affair had well nigh had its run in Japan, this mermaid, or one 

 made like it, was sold to the Dutch factory at Dezima, and was sent off in the next ship to 

 Batavia. Here one of our speculating brethren of the "universal Yankee nation" contrived to 

 get it, and forthwith repaired to Europe, where he very successfully played the part of proprietor 

 and showman of a veritable mermaid, during the years 1822-'23, thus settling a disputed qiiestion 

 in natural history and filling his pockets at the same time. We are inclined to think that this 

 is the identical mermaid which graces the collection at the New York Museum ; if it be not, 

 then our Japan fisherman furnished the parent, (so ingeniously made as to elude detection,) 

 from which was born the Fee-jee prodigy. 



But another more remarkable and far more creditable instance of the ingenuity and talent of 

 a Japanese fisherman is related in the Dutch annals of Dezima. It occurred during the 

 presidency of M. Doeif. The Dutch at Batavia, during the war, feared the English cruisers too 

 much to send one of their own ships on the annual voyage to Japan. They therefore more than 

 once hired American vessels. One of these having taken in at Dezima the usual cargo of copper 

 and camphor, as she set sail in the night, struck upon a rock in the harbor, filled and sunk. 

 The crew reached the shore in boats, and the authorities of Nagasaki, the Dutch factory, and the 

 American captain, were all alike concerned to devise means of raising the vessel. Japanese 

 divers were sent down to fetch up the copper, but the camphor had dissolved, and the efiliivia 

 thus disengaged cost two of the divers their lives. The idea of unloading her was then aban- 

 doned. Efforts were then made to raise her as she was, but without success. A simple 

 fisherman named Kiyemon, who now perhaps for the first time in his life saw an European built 

 ship, for he did not live in Nagasaki, promised to raise the ship, provided his mere expenses in 

 doing it were paid; if he did not succeed he asked nothing. He was laughed at by the people 

 for his presumption, but, as the case was hopeless, those interested permitted him to make the 



