THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 59 



■%vard by the stern of the vessel and disappeared. I was startled 

 shortly after by the cry ' there it is again to leeward.' On looking 

 3n the direction indicated we saw the great leviathan grimly watch- 

 ing the ship, with about sixty feet of its body elevated in the air^ 

 The occurrence was witnessed by the officers, half of the crew, and 

 myself, and we are ready at any time to testify on oath that we are 

 not in the least mistaken." 



Captain Smith, of the steamer British Princess, on his arrival 

 at Philadelphia May 14th, 1889, reports that May 4th, latitude 

 -44 deg. longitude 42-40, he saw an enormous sea serpent. 

 He and the fourth mate were standing on the bridge. On looking 

 astern he saw, one hundred yards away, a large black object stick- 

 ing out of the water in a perpendicular position, like a long spar or 

 buoy. He seized the glasses to make it out more plainly, and saw 

 it was alive. The head resembled in size and shape the top of a 

 beef barrel. The body, though completely submerged, could be 

 plainly made out by the disturbance of the water around it, and 

 three hundred feet away from where the head and neck stood out 

 of the water the monster's tail was beating and lashing the sea into 

 ■foam. The first officer of the ship adds, that he had been previ- 

 ously a disbeliever in sea-serpent stories. 



The instances above enumerated form only a portion of the 

 evidence that can be produced, but an important communication 

 from the Bishop of Adelaide cannot well be ignored. The Austra- 

 lian mail, within the last few months, brought news of the Bishop's 

 discovery of the carcass of a sea serpent at Avoid Point, near Coffin 

 Bay, South Australia. "While riding along the sea beach," he 

 states, " I came across a dead sea serpent about sixty feet in length. 

 It had a head five feet long, like that of an immense snake, with 

 two blow holes on the top, no teeth in the jaws. The body was 

 round, [the dimensions not given, unfortunately,] the tail like that of 

 a wtiale. Now we may reasonably infer that the monster thus de- 

 scribed must have come to the surface to breathe the atmospheric 

 air. So it appears very extraordinary that it should have escaped 

 observation heretofore. 



