4 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
serves such an account as the nature of the thing, according to 
the Creator's wise ordinances, will admit of. Such I shall give at 
present, and perhaps much greater light on this subject may be 
reserved for posterity. 
" Our fishermen unanimously affirm, and without the least 
variation in their accounts, that when they row out several miles to 
sea, particularly in the hot summer days, and by their situation 
(which they know by taking a view of different points of land) 
expect to find eighty or a hundred fathoms of water, it often 
happens that they do not find above twenty or thirty, and some- 
times less. At these places they generally find the greatest plenty 
of fish, especially cod and ling. Their lines, they say, are no 
sooner out than they may draw them up with the hooks all full of 
fish. By this they know that the Kraken is at the bottom. They 
say this creature causes those unnatural shallows mentioned above, 
and prevents their sounding. These the fishermen are always glad 
to find, looking upon them as a means of their taking abundance 
of fish. There are sometimes twenty boats or more got together 
and throwing out their lines at a moderate distance from each 
other ; and the only thing they then have to observe is whether 
the depth continues the same, which they know by their lines, or 
whether it grows shallower, by their seeming to have less water. 
If this last be the case they know that the Kraken is raising himself 
nearer the surface, and then it is not time for them to stay any longer ; 
they immediately leave off fishing, take to their oars, and get away 
as fast as they can. When they have reached the usual depth of 
the place, and find themselves out of danger, they Ue upon their 
oars, and in a few minutes after they see this enormous monster 
come up to the surface of the water ; he there shows himself suf- 
ficiently, though his whole body does not appear, which, in all 
likelihood, no human eye ever beheld. Its back or upper part, 
which seems to be in appearance about an English mile and a 
half in circumference (some say more, but I chuse the least for 
greater certainty), looks at first like a number of small islands sur- 
rounded with something that floats and fluctuates like sea-weeds. 
Here and there a larger rising is observed like sand-banks, on 
which various kinds of small fishes are seen continually leaping 
