THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 401 



better what was seen than the person who saw it. And 

 yet I am obliged to say, reluctantly and courteously, but 

 most firmly and assuredly, that these perfectly credible 

 eye-witnesses did not correctly interpret that which they 

 saw. In these cases, it is not the eye which deceives, nor 

 the tongue which is untruthful, but the imagination which 

 is led astray by the association of the thing seen with 

 an erroneous idea. I venture to say this, not with any 

 insolent assumption of superior acumen, but because we 

 now possess a key to the mystery which Archdeacon 

 Deinbolt and his neighbours had not access to, and which 

 has only within the last few years been placed in our 

 hands. The movements and aspect of their sea monster 

 are those of an animal with which we are now well 

 acquainted, but of the existence of which the narrators 

 of these occasional visitations were unaware ; namely, the 

 great calamary, the same which gave rise to the stories of 

 the Kraken, and which has probably been a denizen of the 

 Scandinavian seas and fjords from time immemorial. It 

 must be remembered, as I have elsewhere said, that until 

 the year 1873, notwithstanding the adventure of the Alecton 

 in 1 86 1, a cuttle measuring in total length fifty or sixty 

 feet was generally looked upon as equally mythical with 

 the great sea serpent. Both were popularly scoffed at, and 

 to, express belief in either was to incur ridicule. But in 

 the year above mentioned, specimens of even greater 

 dimensions than those quoted were met with on the coasts 

 of Newfoundland, and portions of them were deposited in 

 museums, to silence the incredulous and interest zoologists. 

 When Archdeacon Deinbolt published in 1846 the declara- 

 tion of Mr. Lund and his companions of the fishing ex- 

 cursion, he and they knew nothing of there being such an 

 animal. They had formed no conception of it, nor had 

 VOL. III. H. 2 D 



