CHEATS AND HOAXES. 17 
Capt. Rich had one of his hands wounded. These particulars I 
have in a letter from my brother’. 
“Saml. Dexter’. 
After the perusal of this work my readers will know why I am 
disposed to believe that the animal struck by Captain RicH was 
really a Sea-Serpent. As far as I can judge, after having read all 
that I have found about the sea-serpent, this is the only time 
that the animal was struck with a harpoon. Balls have often been 
fired at it, but it has never been killed yet. In the same copy 
of the Report of the Committee of 1817, there was a letter from 
Mr. Anprews Norton to Mr. Grorcr Bancrort, at that time a 
resident at Gottingen. I give here an extract from this letter con- 
cerning the matter in question. 
“Last Friday morning upon going to breakfast at Dr. Ware’s, 
I found there the papers of the day, in which was announced the 
most interesting fact, that the Sea-Serpent had been taken by the 
expedition fitted out for that purpose. In the Daily Advertiser in 
particular nearly a column was filled with the circumstances of his 
capture, and of the manner in which the information had been 
received , viz. from a person whose name was given, and who had 
come express from Gloucester, the evening before, to bring the 
news. He was said to be 120 feet long, and the Board of Health 
had sent down two boats to stop him in the Harbour. After talk- 
ing about it all breakfast time, I immediately went to Reed’s 
stable, got a horse and chaise, put a news-paper in my pocket, | 
rode to Professor Peck’s, showed him the paper, and offered to 
carry him into Boston, and to procure a boat to go out with him 
into the Harbour, that he might examine it. He was not well, 
and said at first that he could not go; but gradually grew warm 
upon the subject, and concluded at last that it would never do 
for him not to see it. When I had fairly got him into the chaise, 
his spirits rose with the exertion he had made, with the thoughts 
of the memoir and letters which he should write, and with the 
triumph which he anticipated over the Linnaean Society and their 
“diseased black snake’, as he contemptuously called it (meaning 
the small serpent, killed near the shore at Gloucester); for he 
pledged himself that we should find that the sea-serpent had no 
bunches on his back. I too anticipated with great satisfaction the 
honorable mention of me, which his gratitude would induce him 
to make in his memoir upon the subject, and expected confidently 
to float down to posterity behind Mr. Peck, upon this enormous 
2 
