THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 397 



consisting of Captain Sullivan, Lieutenants Maclachlan and 

 Malcolm of the Rifle Brigade, Lieutenant Lister of the 

 Artillery, and Mr. Ince of the Ordnance, whilst crossing 

 Margaret's Bay in a small yacht, on their way from Halifax 

 to Mahone Bay, " saw, at a distance of a hundred and fifty 

 to two hundred yards, the head and neck of some denizen 

 of the deep, precisely like those of a common snake in the 

 act of swimming, the head so far elevated and thrown 

 forward by the curve of the neck, as to enable them to see 

 the water under and beyond it. The creature rapidly 

 passed, leaving a regular wake, from the commencement of 

 which to the fore part, which was out of water, they judged 

 its length to be about eighty feet." They " set down the 

 head at about six feet in length (considerably larger than 

 that of a horse), and that portion of the neck which they 

 saw at the same." " There could be no mistake no delu- 

 sion," they say ; " and we were all perfectly satisfied that we 

 had been favoured with a view of the true and veritable 

 sea serpent." This account was published in the Zoologist, 

 in 1847 (p. 1715), and at that date all the officers above 

 named were still living. 



The next incident of the kind in point of date that we 

 find recorded carries us back to the locality of which 

 Pontoppidan wrote, and in which was seen the animal 

 vouched for by Captain de Ferry. In 1847 there appeared 

 in a London daily paper a long account translated from 

 the Norse journals of fresh appearances of the sea serpent. 

 The statement made was, that it had recently been fre- 

 quently seen in the neighbourhood of Christiansand and 

 Molde. In the large bight of the sea at Christiansand it 

 had been seen every year, only in the warmest weather, 

 and when the sea was perfectly calm, and the surface of 

 the water unruffled. The evidence of three respectable 



