274 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



Rector, and a Curate, being among those who had seen 

 a Sea-Serpent. 



But an appearance of the Sea-Serpent, without doubt, 

 is most satisfactorily attested by the captain and officers 

 of H.M.S. Dadalus. The first notice of it was in the 

 Times of loth October 1848, in which was a paragraph, 

 dated 7th October, from Plymouth : 



"When the Dcedalus frigate, Captain M'Quhae, which 

 arrived here on the 4th inst., was on her passage home 

 from the East Indies, between the Cape of Good Hope 

 and St. Helena, her captain, and most of her officers and 

 crew, at four o'clock one afternoon, saw a Sea- Serpent. 

 The creature was twenty minutes in sight of the frigate, 

 and passed under her quarter. Its head appeared about 

 four feet out of the water, and there was about sixty 

 feet of its body in a straight line on the surface. It is 

 calculated that there must have been under water a length 

 of thirty or forty feet more, by which it propelled itself 

 at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. The diameter of 

 the exposed part of the body was about sixteen inches ; 

 and when it extended its jaws, which were full of large 

 jagged teeth, they seemed sufficiently capacious to admit 

 of a tall man standing upright between them. The ship 

 was sailing north at the rate of eight miles an hour. 

 The Dcedalus left the Cape of Good Hope on the soth of 

 July, and reached St. Helena on the i6th of August." 



Captain M'Quhae sent the following letter to Admiral 

 Sir W. H. Gage, G.C.H., at Devonport : 



"HER MAJESTY'S SHIP D&DALUS, HAMOAZE, 

 Oct. u, 1848. 



" SIR, In reply to your letter of this day's date, requir- 

 ing information as to the truth of a statement published 



