Part 22

“The first time it was seen in 1847 by the Portuguese ship Ville de Lissabonne, captain JUAN ALPHONSO ZARCO Y CAPEDA.”

“This date coincides with the buffooneries of the Charivari on the Constitutionel, and with the first disease of the potatoes.”

“In 1864, the second of The Don observed a similar animal near the coast of Japan; he tattooed it on his arm.”

“I end this series of reports by assuring you that the monster was seen on Wednesday evening, August 10, 1881, by the undersigned, at a quarter to ten P. M. in

latitude 29° 60′ longitude 42° 40′

reckoning the degrees, according to the log-book on board, from the meridian of Greenwich.”

“C. RENARD.”

“(Here follow the seven signatures above-mentioned).”

The Editor of the Monde Illustré adds:

“We leave to the author of this letter and of the subjoined sketch all the responsibility of an assertion which seems to us, least to say, strange, and the details of which we communicate to our readers with due reserve.”

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Let us now pass on to reports of would-be sea-serpents.

III.

Would-be Sea-Serpents.

It is by no means astonishing that in the vast waters of the ocean several objects, totally different from the animal generally known as the Great Sea-Serpent, gave rise to tales of that Great Unknown, such as wrecks, gigantic sea-weeds, or even animal beings. So we meet with an account dated:

1720.--(See PONTOPPIDAN.) “THORLACK THORLACKSEN has told me that in 1720 a Sea-Serpent had been shut up a whole week in a little inlet, in which it came with high tide through a narrow entrance of seven or eight fathoms deep, and that eight days afterwards, when it had left the inlet, a skin of a snake or serpent was found. One end of the skin had sunk into the water of the inlet, so that its length could not be made out, as the inlet was several fathoms deep, and the skin partly lay there. The other end of this skin was washed on the shore by the current, where everybody could see it; apparently, however, it could not be used, for it consisted of a soft slimy mass. THORLACKSEN was a native of the harbour of Kobbervueg.”

It may be that a real sea-serpent remained a week in the inlet. The Norwegian fishermen know the sea-serpent too well to make mistakes. Another animal would not have been called a sea-serpent, and a short description of it would have been given. But the skin wrongly attributed to the sea-serpent, was certainly nothing else but a putrified long arm or tentacle of a gigantic calamary. The description “soft and slimy mass” proves this sufficiently. The great calamary died in the fjord, or inlet, and its long dead arm was floated ashore by the current, while the body sank. Such great calamaries, the true Krakens, have been measured, and found to have a body of 30 feet in length with long tentacles of 58 feet (see LEE, Sea Monsters Unmasked, London, 1883). I give here a figure of the largest ever found. (See our Fig. 6.)

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1808.--The Animal of Stronsa.--Perhaps no stranded animal, even the so-called sea-monks of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century caused such an excitement among the learned as “the animal of Stronsa”.

The oldest report of it is certainly a letter from Mr. CAMPBELL, in which only the following lines refer to it:

“A snake (my friend TELFORD received a drawing of it) has been found thrown on the Orkney-Isles, a sea-snake with a mane like a horse, 4 feet thick and 55 feet long, this is seriously true. MALCOLM LAING, the historian saw it, and sent a drawing of it to my friend.”

The letter was first printed in the work entitled: “Life and Letters of Campbell”, and afterwards the above quoted lines were reprinted in the Zoologist for 1849, p. 2395.

In the Proceedings of the Meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society on the 19th. of November, 1808, printed in the Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 32, p. 190, we read:

“At this meeting Mr. P. NEILL read an account of a great Sea-Snake, lately cast ashore in Orkney. This curious animal, it appears, was stranded in Rothiesholm Bay, in the Island of Stronsa. Malcolm Laing, Esq., M. P. being in Orkney at the time, communicated the circumstance to his brother, Gilbert Laing Esq., advocate at Edinburgh, on whose property the animal had been cast. Through this authentic channel Mr. Neill received his information. The body measured fifty five feet in length, and the circumference of the thickest part might be equal to the girth of an Orkney pony. The head was not larger than that of a seal, and was furnished with two blow holes. From the back a number of filaments (resembling in tecture the fishing-tackle known by the name of silk-worm gut) hung down like a mane. On each side of the body were three large fins, shaped like paws, and jointed. The body was unluckily knocked to pieces by a tempest; but the fragments have been collected by Mr. Laing, and are to be transmitted to the Museum at Edinburgh. Mr. Neill concluded with remarking, that no doubt could be entertained that this was the kind of animal described by Ramus, Egede, and Pontoppidan, but which scientific and systematic naturalists had hitherto rejected as spurious and ideal.”

In the meeting of the same Society on the 14th. of January, 1809, (see Phil. Mag. Vol. 33. p. 90.),

“Dr. John Barclay communicated some highly curious observations which he had made on the caudal vertebrae of the Great Sea-Snake, (formerly mentioned) which exhibit in their structure some beautiful provisions of Nature, not hitherto observed in the vertebrae of any other animal.”

“And Mr. Patric Neill read an ample and interesting account of this new animal, collected from different sources, especially letters of undoubted authority, which he had received from the Orkneys. He stated, however, that owing to the tempestuous season, the head, fin, sternum, and dorsal vertebrae, promised some weeks ago to the University Museum at Edinburgh, had not yet arrived; but that he had received a note from Gilbert Meason, esq., (the gentleman on whose estate in Stronsa the sea-snake was cast,) intimating that they might be expected by the earliest arrivals from Orkney. In the mean time, he submitted to the Society the first sketch of a generic character. The name proposed for this new genus was Halsydrus, (from ἁλς the sea, and ὑδρος a water snake); and as it evidently appeared to be the Soe-Ormen described above half a century ago, by Pontoppidan, in his Natural History of Norway, it was suggested that its specific name should be H. Pontoppidani.”

Mr. MALCOLM LAING and Dr. GRANT, living on Stronsa, were requested to take down the affidavits of the eye-witnesses, and at the meeting of the Wernerian Society on the 11th. of February, 1809, (see Phil. Mag. Vol. 33. p. 251),