158 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS, 



The next account of a different sea monster was given by Cap- 

 tain Drewer, and is chiefly taken from the log-book of the bark 

 Paulhie. "July 8th, 1875, 5 deg. 13 min: north latitude, 35 deg. 

 west longitude. Cape San Roque, N. E. coast, Brazil, distance twenty 

 miles, at 1 1 a. m. ; weather fine and clear, wind and sea moderate. 

 Perceived black spots on the water, and a whitish pillar some thirty 

 feet above them — breakers as I thought. The pillar fell with a 

 splash, and another arose. They rose and fell alternately in quick 

 succession. A good glass showed me it was a monster sea serpent 

 coiled twice round a sperm whale. The head and tail parts, each 

 about thirty feet long, were acting as levers, twisting irself and vic- 

 tim round with great velocity. They sank out of sight every two 

 minutes, coming revolving to the surface. The struggles of the 

 whale, and two other whales that were nearly frantic with excite- 

 ment, made the sea in their vicinity like a boiling cauldron. 

 This strange occurrence lasted some fifteen minutes, and finished 

 with the tail portion of the whale being elevated straight in the 

 air, then waving backward and forward, lashing the waters furi- 

 ously in- the death struggle as it went down head foremost." Allow- 

 ing for the two coils the captain estimated the length at from one 

 hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy feet, and seven or 

 eight feet in girth. In color much like a conger eel. " It is curi- 

 ous," adds the World newspaper, " that the whale, that lives on the 

 smallest food of any fish, should itself be a meal for another mon- 

 ster.'' It seems more curious still perhaps to find the sperm whale, 

 whose powerful jaws have frequently crushed a whaler into splin- 

 ters, thus confounded with the ordinary whalebone whale, a far less 

 formidable mammal. The female sperm is only half the size of the 

 male (about thirty feet only), very little larger than the grampus, 

 but rarely the latter has been known to attain seventy-six feet, if 

 reliance can be place on the statements of our whaling skippers. 



The worthy captain mentions that owing to various circum- 

 stances which he enumerates, the north-eastern shores of Brazil are 

 but little frequented by ships, etc., either for business or pleasure. 

 " I wrote thus far," he stated, " httle thinking that I would ever see 

 the monster again; but at 7 a. m., July 13th, same latitude, some 

 eighty miles east of San Roque, I was astonished to see the same or 

 a similar one. It was throwing its head and about forty feet of its 

 body out of the water in a horizontal position, as it passed on- 



