THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 
75 
as he had not been so fortunate as to see this monster of the 
deep ; but after the many accounts he has read, and the relations 
he has received from credible witnesses, he does not dare longer 
to doubt the existence of the sea-serpent. 
P. W. Deinholt. 
"Molde, 29th Nov., 1845." 
We may at once accept most fully and frankly the 
statements of all the worthy people mentioned in this 
series of incidents. There is no room for the shadow of a 
doubt that they all recounted conscientiously that which 
they saw. The last quoted occurrence, especially, is most 
accurately and intelligently described — so clearly, indeed, 
that it furnishes us with a clue to the identity of the 
strange visitant. 
Here let me say — and I wish it to be distinctly under- 
stood — that I do not deny the possibility of the existence 
of a great sea serpent, or other great creatures at present 
unknown to science, and that I have no inclination to 
explain away that which others have seen, because I 
myself have not witnessed it. " Seeing is believing," it is 
said, and it is not agreeable to have to tell a person that, in 
common parlance, he " must not trust his own eyes." It 
seems presumptuous even to hint that one may know 
better what was seen than the person who saw it. And 
yet I am obliged to say, reluctantly and courteously, but 
most firmly and assuredly, that these perfectly credible 
eye-witnesses did not correctly interpret that which they 
witnessed. In these cases, it is not the eye which deceives, 
nor the tongue which is untruthful, but the imagination 
which is led astray by the association of the thing seen with 
an erroneous idea. I venture to say this, not with any 
insolent assumption of superior acumen, but because we 
now possess a key to the mystery which Archdeacon 
