304 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[August 2, 1886. 



Ihey (the serpents) fly from them when they come near 

 them," itc. &c. 



Comparing Japanese and Chinese pictures of dragons, 

 singular though some of them are, with such pictures as 

 tig.l, where we see a most carefully drawn octopus (a crea- 

 ture which, if it were not known, would be rejected by all 

 the foolish as impossible), we see that in all probability 

 creatures akin at any rate to the Chinese and Japanese 

 dragons, if not actually identical with them, must have 

 existed in past ages. 



As to the sea-serpent, it is, of course, only the very 

 foolish, as the penny-a-liners of some of the daily papers, 

 who now scout the idea that the accounts of strange 

 sea-monstei-s, serpentine at any rate in aspect, have been 

 truthful. Such persons, imagining the world to be full 

 of folk like themselves, ever ready to invent all sorts 

 of lying narratives, raise shouts of idiotic laughter at the 

 stories of such monsters related by seamen and voyagers of 

 good repute for sense and veracity. It may, indeed, be 

 truly said that we owe to such stupid persons even the 

 lying stories which have unquestionably been told about 

 sea-serpents. For so soon as the idea has once been thrown 

 out by the silly that silly untruths have been told about 



Olaus Magnus describes two kinds of sea-serpent. But 

 he wrote from the accounts of others, as did Aldrovandus 

 and Arndt Bernsen. Hans (afterwards Bishop) Egede, on 

 the contrary, figures and describes a sea-monster which 

 showed itself on his passage (as a missionary) to Greenland. 

 '"On July 6, 1734," he says, •' when oil" the south coast of 

 Greenland, a sea-monster appeared to us (fig. 2) whose head 

 when raised was on a level with our main top. Its snout was 

 long and sharp, and it blew water almost like a whale ; it 

 had large brown paws ; its body was covered with scales ; 

 its skin was rough and uneven ; in other respects it was as 

 a serpent, and when it dived its tiiil, which was raised in 

 the air, appealed to be a whole ship's length from its body." 

 The drawing (fig. 2) appears to liave been made bj' another 

 missionary, Mr. Bing, who stated that the creature's eyes 

 seemed red and like burning fire. 



Laurance de Ferry, captain in the Norwegian navy, 

 actually wounded one of the Norwegian serpents, and two 

 of his men testified on oath to the truth of his account. 

 Bishop Gunner describes a race of sea-serpents found in the 

 sea of Finmark. Captain (afterwards Sir Arthur) de 

 Capell Brooke collected accounts of a sea-serpent seen 

 several times from July 1849 till the warm weather was 



^m VrM^ -t 



Fi'j. :>.— Sea-sekpekt seen by the Officers and Crew of the Government Frigate (ok, in the vulgar, Hek 



Majesty's Ship) " D.edalus" in 1818. 



sea-serpents, their kindred, the tellers of silly falsehoods, are 

 sure to be tempted to supply really falsa stories of sea- 

 serpents, were it for no other purpose than to prove that 

 such falsehoods may be told. 



Although some of the stories told by Pontoppidsm, the 

 Bishop of Bergen, may have been exaggei-ated, there is no 

 sufficient reason to reject the general evidence supplied to 

 him by Northern traders in legard to the existence of 

 strange sea-monsters. His " Natural History of Norway " 

 was published in 17.5.5 — not in the third or fourth century 

 as many seem to imagine, who discredit all his accounts 

 as the product of credulous ages like those which accepted 

 the stories handed down to us by the early Fathers. He 

 tells us he had the evidence of creditable and experienced 

 fishermen and sailors in Norway, of which there are hun-- 

 dreds who can testify that they have annually seen " sea- 

 Reri)ents. The North traders, he adds, who came to Bergen 

 every year with merchandise thought it a vei-y sti-ange 

 question when they were seriously asked whether there 

 were any such creatures — as ridiculous, in fact, as if the 

 question had been put to them whether there be such fish 

 as eel or conger." 



over. These are given in full in Mr. Gould's book. A 

 similar animal was seen in 1822, in 1845, and 1848. The 

 Rev. Alf. C. Smith, writing in 18.50, summarises thus the 

 result of his investigations : " I cannot withhold my belief 

 in the existence of some huge inhabitant of those Northern 

 seas, when, to my mind, the fact of his existence has been 

 clearly proved lay numerous eye-witnesses, many of whom 

 were too intelligent to be deceived, and too honest to be 

 doubted." 



We may mention next a sea-serpent seen and described 

 by Mr. MacLean, parish minister of Eigg, in 1809 ; another 

 seen and described by the Bev. John McRae, of Glenelg, 

 and the Rev. David Twopeny, vicar of Stockbury, Kent ; 

 and another seen in 1882 by Mr. Barfoot, J. P., of 

 Leicester, Mr. Marlow, solicitor, of Manchester, Mrs. 

 Marlow, and several others, near the Little Orme's Head. 



In American waters the sea serpent has been seen several 

 times on the coast of Maine — possibly the same creature— 

 during the thirty years preceding 1809. Eleven depositions 

 were taken, the witnesses being persons of unquestioned 

 veracity. In 1819 a simil.ir animal was seen off Nahant. 

 In 1847 five officers of the garrison at Halifax, when on a 



