STRANGE SEA CREATURES. 225 



Smith, of the ship Pekin, that on December 28, not far from 

 the place where the Dczdalus had encountered the supposed 

 sea-serpent, he had seen, at a distance of about half a mile, 

 a creature which was declared by all hands to be the great 

 sea-serpent, but proved eventually to be a piece of gigantic 

 sea-weed. " I have no doubt," he says, that the great sea- 

 serpent seen from the Dadalus " was a piece of the same 

 weed." 



It will have been noticed that the sea-weed sea-serpents, 

 seen by Captain F. Smith and by Captain Herriman, were 

 both at a distance of half a mile, at which distance one can 

 readily understand that a piece of sea-weed might be mis- 

 taken for a living creature. This is rather different from the 

 case of the Dcedalus sea-serpent, which passed so near that 

 had it been a man of the captain's acquaintance he could 

 have recognized that man's features with the naked eye. 

 The case, too, of Captain Harrington's sea-serpent, seen 

 within 20 yards of the Castilian, can hardly be compared 

 to those cases in which sea-weed, more than 800 yards from 

 the ship, was mistaken for a living animal. An officer of the 

 Dczdalus thus disposed of Captain Smith's imputation : 

 " The object seen from the ship was beyond all question a 

 living animal, moving rapidly through the water against a 

 cross sea, and within five points of a fresh breeze, with such 

 velocity that the water was surging against its chest as it 

 passed along at a rate probably of ten miles per hour. 

 Captain M'Quhse's first impulse was to tack in pursuit, but 

 he reflected that we could neither lay up for it nor overhaul 

 it in speed. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but 

 to observe it as accurately as we could with our glasses as it 

 came up under our lee quarter and passed away to wind- 

 ward, being at its nearest position not more than 200 yards 

 from us ; the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour, and the 

 form, all being most distinctly visible to us. . . . My im- 

 pression was that it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine 

 character, as its movement was steady and uniform, as // 

 propelled by fins, not by any undulatory power." 



Q 



