THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 



389 



air through their " blow-holes." Under these circum- 

 stances they have been described by naturalists and 

 seamen as resembling a long string 

 of casks or buoys, often extending 

 for sixty, eighty, or a hundred 

 yards. This is just such a spec- 

 tacle as that described by Olaus 

 Magnus his " long line of spheri- 

 cal convolutions," and also as one 

 reported to Pontoppidan as being 

 descriptive of the sea-serpent : 



" ' I have been informed,' he says, ' by 

 some of our sea-faring men that a cable * 

 would not be long enough to measure the 

 length of some of them when they are 

 observed on the surface of the water in 

 an even line. They say those round 

 lumps or folds sometimes lie one after 

 another as far as a man can see. I con- 

 fess, if this be true, that we must suppose 

 most probably that it is not one snake, 

 but two or more of these creatures lying 

 in a line that exhibit this phenomenon,' 

 In a foot-note he adds : 'If any one 

 enquires how many folds may be counted 

 on a sea-snake, the anwer is that the 

 number is not always the same, but 

 depends upon the various sizes of them : 

 five and twenty is the greatest number 

 that I find well attested.' Adam Olearius, 

 in his Gottorf Museum, w . ites of it thus : 

 'A person of distinction from Sweden 

 related here at Gottorf that he had heard 

 the burgomaster of Malmoe, a very 

 worthy man, say that as he was once 

 standing on the top of a very high hill, 

 towards the North Sea, he saw in the water, which was very calm, a 



* Six hundred feet. 



FIG. 15. PONTOPPIDAN'S 

 "SEA SERPENT." 



