212 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



and had short, curled, black hair, which did not reach below 

 his ears ; his eyes lay deep in his head, and he had a 

 meagre and pinched face, with a black, coarse beard, that 

 looked as if it had been cut. His skin was coarse, and 

 very full of hair. He stood in the same place for half a 

 quarter of an hour, and was seen above the water down to 

 his breast: at last the men grew apprehensive of some 

 danger, and began to retire ; upon which the monster 

 blew up his cheeks, and made a kind of roaring noise, and 

 then dived under water, so that they did not see him any 

 more. One of them, Peter Gunnersen, related (what the 

 others did not observe) that this merman was, about the 

 body and downwards, quite pointed, like a fish. This same 

 Peter Gunnersen likewise deposed that " about twenty years 

 before, as he was in a boat near Kulleor, the place where 

 he was born, he saw a mermaid with long hair and large 

 breasts." He and his two companions were, by command 

 of the king, examined by the burgomaster of Elsineur, 

 Andrew Bussaeus, before the privy-councillor, Fridrich von 

 Gram, and their testimony to the above effect was given 

 on their respective oaths. 



Brave old Henry Hudson, the sturdy and renowned 

 navigator, who thrice, in three successive years, gave battle 

 to . the. northern ice, and was each time defeated in his 

 endeavour to discover a north-west or north-east passage 

 to China, though he stamped his name on the title-page of 

 a mighty nation's history, records the following incident : 



" This evening (June 1 5th) one of our company, looking overboard, 

 saw a mermaid, and, calling up some of the company to see her, one 

 more of the crew came up, and by that time she was come close to 

 the ship's side, looking earnestly on the men. A little after a sea 

 came and overturned her. From the naVel upward, her back and 

 breasts were like a woman's, as they say that saw her ; her body as 

 big as one of us, her skin very white, and long hair hanging down 



