122 
NOTES. 
laughable wit of Sancho Panza, who was the Sam Weller of 
the seventeenth century, gives this terrible account of the 
Sea-Serpent in the last romance he ever wrote, entitled, 
“ The Troubles of Persiles and Sigismunda,” and which he 
dedicated to his best patron, the Count De Lemos, April 19, 
1617. The scene in which the Sea-Serpent is introduced is 
laid in the North Sea, off the coast of Norway ; and it is not 
to be presumed that a great writer like Cervantes, with his 
usual fidelity to Nature, would have introduced into what 
he intended should be his great work this story, unless he 
had for it some foundation ; still, if this is purely his own 
invention, it is certainly a wonderful coincidence that the 
scene is laid on the coast of Norway, where, Pontoppidan as¬ 
serts, just such attacks have happened, and where the Rev. 
Mr. Egede saw, as he declares, u on the sixth of July, 1734, 
a very large and frightful sea-monster, which raised itself 
up so high out of the water, that its head reached above 
our main-top. It had a long, sharp snout, and spouted water 
like a whale , and had very broad paws. The body seemed to 
be covered with scales, and the skin was uneven and wrinkled, 
and the lower part was formed like a snake.” (Egede’s Jour . 
of Greenland Mission , page 6.) Now this passage from the 
first volume of Cervantes’ work, translated, runs thus :—“I 
was sitting on deck, when suddenly it began to .rain, not 
drops, but whole sheets of water upon the ship, in a manner 
that appeared as if the sea had been taken into the air and 
fallen upon the ship. All suddenly arose, and looked on every 
side, but we saw the heavens clear , and no signs of a hurri¬ 
cane ; and those who were with me said, 4 Without doubt this 
rain does not come from the heavens, but from the heads of 
those monstrous fishes they call shipwreckers ; and, if so, we 
are in great danger of being lost. We must fire off all our 
artillery, and frighten them with ihe noise. At this, we saw 
raised and put into the ship a neck like that of a terrible 
serpent, who took off a mariner, and swallowed him quick¬ 
ly, without so much as even chewing him ! This was done 
amid the confused noise of the mariners, who did not dare to 
rise on their feet, for fear of being carried off by this horrid 
