"one so far as to give them some human feelings. Such stories 
were multiplied so rapidly that sailors carefully learned each new 
rule for avoiding the dangerous sirens. Those who went to sea 
were told to throw to the beguiling monsters bottles, with which 
they would play sufficiently long to permit of the sailors’ escape. 
They were told, however, that if the bottles did not succeed, they 
must stop their ears with wax and pray to heaven for assistance. 
Cabot, the discoverer, advised his officers that prayers against the 
enchantments of sea monsters be held twice every day, and that 
all inventions of the Evil One, like dice, cards and backgammon 
should be prohibited ; but especially they were “ to take good 
care.against certain creatures which, with the heads of men and 
the tails of fishes, swim about in the fiords and bays, armed with 
bows and arrows and feed upon human flesh.” The excited im¬ 
aginations of the sailors made them see sirens, or other wonders 
of the sea. Even Columbus, sailing along the coast of St. Do¬ 
mingo, met with three sirens dancing on the waters. These 
sirens, however, were so destitute of either beauty or song, that 
Columbus wittily said that they must be grief stricken because of 
their enforced absence from Greece. John Smith, the navigator, 
when nearing our continent, saw a beautiful woman gracefully 
swimming near his vessel. Her charms were so great and so 
many, that she might have captured the navigator’s heart had she 
not ignorantly exposed her forked fish tail. Mermen and mer¬ 
maids make a prominent part in the sea stories of Denmark, and 
each town has its own legends; but the mermen are less interest¬ 
ing than the maids. Both appear to the sailor and give him 
warning, or they come on shore, help the wearied in many ways, 
and disappear only when they are ill treated or ridiculed. As 
soon as modern investigation demanded proofs of the existence of 
such beings, smart cheats began to manufacture them, as by skill¬ 
fully joining the body of an ape to the lower part of a fish, and 
such sirens are to be seen in some of the museums. In England, 
a living mermaid was exhibited, who held the historic mirror and 
comb in her hands, and playfully splashed the water with her 
tail, but when rural curiosity was at its highest, it was discovered 
that the mermaid was a poor woman ingeniously covered by a 
fish skin. We will not attempt to recount the blood-curdling 
