THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 387 



and some of them passed through his sieve in spite of his 

 care. Of these are the accounts of the " spawning times " 

 of the sea serpent, its dislike of certain scents, &c. We 

 must pass over all this, and confine ourselves to the 

 evidence offered by him of its having been seen. 



The first witness he adduces is Captain Lawrence de 

 Ferry, of the Norwegian navy, and first pilot in Bergen, 

 who, premising that he had doubted a great while whether 

 there were any such creature till he had ocular demonstra- 

 tion of it, made the following statement, addressed formally 

 and officially to the procurator of Bergen : 



" Mr. JOHN REUTZ 



" The latter end of August, in the year 1746, as I was on a voyage, 

 on my return from Trundhiem, on a very calm and hot day, having a 

 mind to put in at Molde, it happened that when we were arrived with 

 my vessel within six English miles of the aforesaid Molde, being at a 

 place called Jule-Nasss, as I was reading in a book, I heard a kind of 

 a murmuring voice from amongst the men at the oars, who were eight 

 in number, and observed that the man at the helm kept off from the 

 land. Upon this I inquired what was the matter, and was informed 

 that there was a sea-snake before us. I then ordered the man at the 

 helm to keep to the land again, and to come up with this creature of 

 which I had heard so many stories. Though the fellows were under 

 some apprehension, they were obliged to obey my orders. In the 

 meantime the sea-snake passed by us, and we were obliged to tack 

 the vessel about in order to get nearer to it. As the snake swam 

 faster than we could row, I took my gun, that was ready charged, and 

 fired at it ; on this he immediately plunged under the water. We 

 rowed to the place where it sunk down (which in the calm might be 

 easily observed) and lay upon our oars, thinking it would come up 

 again to the surface ; however it did not. Where the snake plunged 

 down, the water appeared thick and red ; perhaps some of the shot 

 might wound it, the distance being very little. The head of this 

 snake, which it held more than two feet above the surface of the water 

 resembled that of a horse. It was of a greyish colour, and the mouth 

 was quite black, and very large. It had black eyes, and a long white 

 mane, that hung down from the neck to the surface of the water, 



2 C 2 



