CHAPTER IV 

 THE SEA SERPENT 



F all fish stories of the sea, the first place must 

 be given to the accounts of the sea serpent in its 

 protean forms. Even after eliminating the com- 

 mercial sea serpents, developed by owners of sea- 

 side and lakeside resorts, and cutting out yarns deliberately 

 concocted by fun-loving seamen, there is left a marvelous 

 collection of stories, alarming, staggering and seemingly 

 impossible to the timid dweller in the city flat, or the average 

 traveler by sea. 



Real sea serpents are small venomous snakes with oar- 

 like tails, found in the gulfs and bays of the tropical Pacific, 

 from the west coast of Mexico to the Indian Ocean. The 

 eels, the large Conger, the various morays, are snake-like 

 enough, and some of them are viciously savage; but these 

 have little in common with the real sea serpent of popular 

 ocean mythology, which is a huge snake-like beast, with a 

 touch of the plesiosaurus, and a suggestion of the Chinese 

 dragon. 



The sea serpent is a beast of ancient lineage. It formed 

 the basis of fish stories centuries ago. On the walls of the 

 Assyrian palace at Khorsabad there is the figure of a sea 

 serpent, which was seen by one Sargon on his trip to Cyprus 

 two thousand six hundred years ago. Doubtless sea ser- 

 pents of the largest size have played upon the imagination 

 of man from the very earliest times. Aristotle tells of them 

 on the coast of Libya, where they fed upon oxen and left 

 the bones along the sands. Almost all of the old nature 

 writers tried their hand at the sea serpent, and were all the 



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