MARINE MONSTERS. 



273 



cvc-witiicsscs of wliat lie relates. He gives in detail the circumstances above 

 alluded to hvDr. (Shaw from the account as su[>plied hy Dens himself; and, 

 among otiier instances, he mentions that at St. Malo, in the chapel of St. 

 Thomas, there is an ex voto, or picture deposited there by the crew of a vessel, 

 in remembrance of their wonderful preservation during a similar attack off 

 the coast of Angola. 



The Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh contain a notice of a 

 supposed kraken 'v\luch ajipeared oft" the eastern coast of Scotland more than 

 sixt}' years ago. Its appearance is fortilied by the affidavits of the master 

 and mate of a Xorwegian ship, made before two magistrates. They reported 

 that it was seen Sunday, about fifteen leagues from shore, in latitude .")(i° 1(1'. 

 It was less than a mile from the ship, and seemed to be about three miles 

 long, of a grayish color, and in form resembled three low islands. It was 

 visible for nearly an hour, but as a breeze sprang up it gradually disappeared. 

 This nuist have been a mere illusion ; it was probably a fog-bank, which the 

 wild imagination of the Xorwe^ians transformed into a sea monster. 



Pontoppidon also states that lie was informed that one of these creatures 

 ■was stranded among the rocks, in Norland, in the year 1(380, and that the 

 carcass filled up a great part of the Narrow Channel, and, being a long time 

 decaying, made it almost impassable by its intolerable stench. 



Vie conclude this account of the kraken, with an extract from Blackwood's 

 ^lagazinc. "The difierent authorities we have quoted arc, we trust, sufficient 

 to establish the existence of an enormous inhabitant of the deep (the cuttle- 

 fish), possessed of characters which, in a remarkable degree, distinguish it 

 from every other creature with which we are fiimiliar ; and the agreement 

 which may be observed in its descriptions, when compared with those of the 

 celebrated kraken, is sufficiently obvious to warrant the inference which we 

 are now prepared to draw : that the great Xorwegian animal thus named is 

 to be considered not as a wild and groundless chimera, but as cither identical 

 with or nearly allied to this colossal cuttle-fish. 



" It must be confessed that many of the accounts to which we have referred, 

 if considered singly, are much too vague and indefinite to form the founda- 

 tion of any opinion ; but it is the general import and tendency of the whole 

 combined which should be considered. In this view, it would be contrary 

 to an enlightened philosophy to reject, as spurious, the history of an animal 

 the existence of which is rendered so probable, by evidence deduced from the 

 prevailing belief of the diiferent tribes of mankind, whose opinions, it is 

 evident, could not have been influenced or affected l)y the tradition of each 

 other, but must have resulted from the occasional appearances of the monster 

 itself in different quarters of the globe." 



The Sea Serpent of the Norwegian Coast. AVe introduce the very 

 NO. VII. "35 • 



