Chap. I.} 
THE DUG-ONG-. 
7] 
creatures were again seen by him and more than fifty 
witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight. 1 
"If any narrative in the world," adds Valentyn, 
"deserves credit, it is this; since not only one but two 
mermen together were seen by so many eye-witnesses. 
Should the stubborn world, however, hesitate to believe 
it, it matters nothing ; as there are people who would 
even deny that such cities as Eome, Constantinople 
or Cairo, exist, merely because they themselves have 
not happened to see them." 
But what are such incredulous persons, he continues, 
to make of the circumstance recorded by Albert Herport 
in his account of India 2 , that a sea-man was seen in the 
water near the Church of Taquan, on the morning of 
the 29th of April 1661, and a mermaid at the same spot 
the same afternoon ? — or what do they say to the fact 
that in 1714, a mermaid was not only seen but captured 
near the island of Booro ? " five feet Ehineland measure 
" in height, which lived four days and seven hours, but 
" refusing all food, died without leaving any intelligible 
" account of herself." 
Valentyn, in support of his own faith in the mer- 
maid, cites numerous other instances in which both 
" sea-men and women" were seen and taken at Amboina; 
especially one by an office-bearer in the Church of 
Holland 3 , by whom it was surrendered to the Grovernor 
Vanderstel. 
Of this well-authenticated specimen he gives an 
elaborate engraving amongst those of the authentic fishes 
of the island — together with a minute ichthyological 
1 Valentyn, Beschryving, #c, Berne, 1669. 
vol. iii. p. 331. 3 A " krank-bezoeker " or visit- 
2 Probably the Itinerarmrn In- ant of the sick. 
dicum of Albrecht Herport. 
J? 4 
