long for; but grappling boldly with known |nance the necessity which prompted the "facts," he forthwith introduces us to vari- King of Portugal to resort to law against ous wonders of the creation, and vouches the Grand-Master of St. Jago, in order to for the truth of what he advances under determine which party the monsters belongevidence enough to satisfy any reasonable ed to: besides, who could doubt the Havman. When an Italian Cicerone, in lead-mand and Hav-frue of the North Sea, after ing a gaping T. G. round a church, is the asseverations of the Norwegian fisherasked whether a miracle he may be relating men as to their existence? is really credible, his reply is sta scritto nei libri! On the same principle our yarns are submitted to the belief of our readers, since every thread in them is "written in books." In approaching towards our own times, the details are clenched with increased intrepidity of assertion. Thus, in 1682, the apostolic missionary, Merolla da Sorrento, being on the coast of Congo, discovered Among the marvels of marine Natural that the mer-maid is to be found throughout History, the Mer-men and Mer-maids may the river Zaire; and he further tells us, claim the priority of description, inasmuch that from the middle upwards it has some as they have been immemoriably objects of resemblance of a woman, as in its breast, grave attention. Poets, painters, historians, nipples, hands, and arms, but downwards it heralds, navigators, and indeed all sorts of is altogether a fish, ending in a long tail men, women, and children, have dwelt with forked: its head is round, its eyes full, its avidity on the numerous and various tales mouth large, and its face like that of a calf. respecting these curious compounds. The The Portuguese call it peixe molker (the gravest of the ancients talked of mer-folk, woman-fish ;) and Merolla, to whom we shall and knew well what they were, otherwise we had never heard of their sirens, and nereids, and tritons, and other attendants upon Neptune : Prima hominis facies, et pulchro pectore virgo have an eye in future, adds-' I have eat of this divers times, and it seems to be well relished, and not unlike swine's flesh, which its entrails likewise resemble.' Should any one doubt after this, let them listen to another of his stories: 'The Captain of a certain ship having been in a great storm, drove into one of these ports Pliny, indeed, vouches for the existence to repair his damage; his passengers going of these creatures, declaring that he was ashore to look about them, discovered at a disable to produce many right worshipful Ro- and that not only in their actions, for they saw tance a sort of sea-monsters like unto men, man knights of credit to support the asser- them plainly gather a great quantity of a certion; he instances a mer-man near Cadiz, tain herb, with which they plunged themselves which used to board their galleys at night, into the sea. Having observed what sort of and mer-maids, it appears, were common herb this was, the passengers gathered seveenough in those days. But we have the ral bundles of it likewise, and laid the same testimony of later writers than Pliny to es- upon the shore: the sea-monsters returning, tablish the existence of the half-human and finding it ready gathered to their hands, half-fish natives of the deep. Isaac de Lar- But, O, the great example of gratitude that took it up and plunged into the sea as before. rey, in his Histoire d'Angleterre, informs us reigns even in the deeps! These creatures, that, in the year 1187, such a monster was knowing themselves to have been obliged, caught on the coast of Suffolk, and kept forthwith drew from the bottom of the sea a for half a year. It bore so near a conform-great quantity of coral and other marine proity with man, that nothing but the want of ducts, and carrying them ashore, laid them in speech prevented their learning his whole the same place where they had found the story. One day it took the opportunity of making its escape, and plunging into the sea, was never more heard of. When the Dutch dykes were breached by the sea, in 1430, a mer-maid was washed into the mud, and being taken to Edam, was dressed in woman's apparel, and taught to spin. It fed like a from, but could never be brought to offer at speech, although it lived several years at Haarlaem. Well attested accounts of various others about this time counte herbs. This being repeated several times, the passengers thought these creatures endeavored to exceed them in benefits; and therefore, as a great rarity, scarce to be paralleled even in rational animals, they resolved, if possible, to take them. For this purpose they procured a net from the ship, and pitched it in a proper place; but though their design succeeded so far as to take them, yet could not they hold them, they showing them another human trick, which was by lifting up the net and making their escape, never appearing thereafter as long as the ship staid ! Now, unless Merolla bangs Tom Pepper, | waves dashed the hair, which was of a seathis tale must be believed to the very let- green shade, over her face, the hands were ter; indeed, should it not be true, Pinto is immediately employed to replace it. It only a type of him. But ought a writer to also rubbed its throat, which was slender, be questioned who is well corroborated? smooth, and white, and it frequently extendAnother missionary, Dos Santos, only two ed its arms over its head, as if to frighten years afterwards, enjoyed feasting upon a bird that hovered over it. Sir John Sinmer-maids on the coast of Eastern Ethio- clair afterwards saw this very mer-maid, or pia; and Padre Cavazzi not only describes one of the same family. Now, in face of the pesce donna in 1690, but Labat gives its these facts, your disagreeable matter-of-fact effigies and a queer creature it is, if im- men will still intrude their incredulity, and plicit confidence can be placed on the like- they offer to explain many of the appearness. Mr. Matcham swears they were regu- ances by summoning manatees and seals to larly cut up and sold by weight in the fish- their aid. To be sure we have seen seals markets at Mombaza; and in the year 1700, look oddly enough when on guard, with John Brand gathered additional notices their heads peering above the waves, and about them in the Orkneys. He relates have even known a whole boat's crew, offi that, about two or three years before his cer and all, deceived; but who ever heard visit, there was a boat passing with several of the seal with a comb in one flipper and gentlemen in it, and by the way, in the a looking-glass in the other, as good old Voe of Quarf, through which they went, Guillim depicts the mer-maid in his Display there appeared something unto them with of Heraldry? Seals, to be sure, are partial its head above the water, which, as they to hearing music, but Shakspeare makes could discern, had the face of an old man, Oberon bear testimony to the musical powwith a long beard hanging down, and it ers of the sea-maids. Explanations are cruneared them sufficiently to enable them all elly sober: according to Sir Humphrey to get a firm glimpse of his features. Where Davy, a very Palæphatus in his way, the there are mer-men there also mer-maids Caithness phenomenon proved to be a stout may be looked for, and we will let Mr. young traveller, who had been bathing at Brand continue his narrative in his own the spot and time when the sea nymph was seen-but he positively denied the green hair and fishy tail. The said traveller, however, was not aware of the perils of bathing in waters frequented by mer-maids, or he never would have disported there; we, together with thousands of others, could have told him of what befel Tunisian youth, off the Goletta, in 1820, and if this had not scared him, nothing would. But incredulity received a shot between wind and waler in 1822, when a real-earnest mer-maid was brought from Batavia and exhibited in London, where it eventually became a ward of the Lord Chancellor. The height of this creature was rather more than two feet, and it was shrivelled and dried like a mummy Its head was the size of a baboon's, and thickly covered with strong black hair; the nose bore a close resemblance to the human form, so likewise did the chin, lips, fingers, nails, and teeth, which were full and perfect. The resemblance to the human form ceased immediately under the breasts, and beneath them were placed two horizontal fins, below which came the fishy tail. This carried conviction with the million; but Sir Everard Home and others, not perceiving why any animal should be furnished with two sets of stomach gear, investigated terms: 'About five years since a boat at the fishing drew her lines, and one of them, as the fishers thought, having some great fish upon it, was with greater difficulty than the rest raised from the ground, but when raised, it came more easily to the surface of the water, upon which a creature like a woman presented itself at the side of the boat; it had the face, arms, breast, shoulders, &c., of a woman, and long hair hanging down the back, but the nether part from below the breasts was beneath the water, so that they could not understand the shape thereof; the two fishers who were in the boat, being surprised at this strange sight, one of them unadvisedly drew a knife, and thrust it into her breast, whereupon she cried, as they judged, 'Alas!' and the hook giving way, she fell backward and was no more seen: the hook being big, went in at her chin and out at the upper lip.' Here, then, we have an authentic instance of the animal's crying out on being stabbed and the noted mer-man seen at the Diamond Rock off Martinique, was distinctly heard to blow its nose. The mer-maid seen in 1809, at Caithness, by the Rev. David Mackay, minister of Reay, his daughter, and others, was observed to be very adroit in its actions, and when the the matter more closely, and, after some trouble, discovered that it was a dexterous junction of a monkey and a salmon. The manner in which the union was effected was so ingenious, and the whole object so nicely cemented, as almost utterly to elude detection by the common forms of examination. Thus blown upon, the mer-maids lost all credit, insomuch that the sages of the Penny Cyclopædia would not even admit of the name being enrolled. Alas for tritons, sirens, satyrs, fauns, ægipans, et hoc genus omne! Let us therefore turn to the Kraken or Korvon, for which Linnæus formed a genus under the name of Microcosmus. 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 judge 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 the means of their taking abundance of fish. There are sometimes twenty boats or more got together, and throwing out 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 find 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 off as fast as they can. When they have reached the usual depth of the place, and find themselves out of danger, they lie 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 sufficiently, though his whole body does not appear, which, in all likelihood, no human eye ever beheld, [excepting the young of this species, which shall afterwards be spoken of;] 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 choose the least for greater certainty,] looks at first like a number of small islands, surrounded 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 about till they roll into the water from the sides of it; at last several bright points or horns appear, which grow thicker and thicker the higher they rise above the surface of the water, and sometimes they stand up as high and as large as the masts of middle-sized vessels. It seems these are the creature's arms, and, it is said, if they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom. After this monster has been on the surface of the water for a short time, it begins slowly to sink again, and then the danger is as great as before; because the motion of his sinking causes such a swell in the sea, and such an eddy or whirlpool, that it draws every thing down with it, their lines at a moderate distance from each The notion that the ocean is the abode of most gigantic and marvellous creatures, has long and very naturally had a rooted possession of the human mind, as is testified by the leviathan of the Scriptures, the many mile fish of the Talmud, and some of the marine monsters of the classical writers. The professed naturalists are to be sure rather cautious of committing themselves, and Oppian simply says, 'In mari multo latent; but Pliny certainly does admit of whales with a back of four acres in extent in the Indian seas, yet thinks it no great wonder, since there are to be found in those regions locusts of four cubits in length. In later times the belief in oceanic monstrosities assumed the garb of philosophic inquiry; and the Scandinavian writers were successful in teaching, that a huge sea-animal, called the kraken, appears on the surface of the waters in calm weather, floating like an island, and stretching forth enormous pellucid tentacula, or arms, so vast as to resemble the masts of ships. Paulinus describes it forma refert cancrum heracleoticum;' Bartholinus calls it hafgufa; and Olaus Magnus-de piscibus monstrosis confirms what is advanced but dear old Pontoppidan, that prince of Norwegian bishops, may be said to give the veritable epitome of all the accounts, authenticated by the substance of his own in-like the current of the river Male,' quiries and thus he lucubrates: This, according to some very shrewd hydrographers, is the cause of so many reported islands which gain insertion on the charts, and can never be rediscovered; and they moreover account for the floating islands said to have been observed in the North Sea, erroneously supposed to have 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 certain points of land) expect to find 80 or 100 fathoms water, it often happens that they do not find above 20 or thirty, and some-been made by the Devil to tease sailors, and times less. At these places they generally find therefore called soe-trolden, or sea-mischief. the greatest plenty of fish, especially cod and Now there have been certain followers of St. Thomas who object to the accounts of minister of Bodoen, in Nordland, and vicar the kraken, for very inadequate reasons, al- of the College for promoting Christian ledging, that if such a creature had been Knowledge. This gentleman then is surely created, it would have multiplied in the worthy of belief! From the narrative which course of time, and by its occasional occur- he drew up, it seems that in the year 1680, rence would ere this have dispelled all a kraken [perhaps a young and careless doubts concerning its existence. The only one] came into the water that runs between way of replying to such hypercritic doubt- the rocks and cliffs in the parish of Alstaers is, by demanding whether krakens may hong, though its usual habit is to keep sevnot be even less prolific than we know ani-eral leagues from land. It happened that mals of extraordinary magnitude to be? As its extended long arms, or antennæ, caught to the supercilious sneer of the commenta- hold of some trees standing near the water, tor, who would like to see what the power which might easily have been torn up by of a kraken would be upon a three-decker, the roots; but besides this, as it was found he is perhaps unacquainted with the strength afterwards, he entangled himself in some of fishes, a strength which may, for aught openings or clefts in the rock, and therein we know, augment in mathematical ratio he stuck so fast, and hung so unfortunately, with size. If such be the actual condition, Lord help a first-rate in the terrible tentacula above-mentioned; for the force which a smaller creature can exert upon occasion, is strikingly depicted by the worthy Bishop in an anecdote, with which every voracious bird ought to be made acquainted, as a caution how he uses his claws. It so happened that one day, an eagle, standing on the bank of a river, saw a fine salmon, as if it were just under him; he struck, instantly, one of his talons into the root of an elm just by, and partly hanging over the other, he struck into the salmon, which was very large, and in his proper element, which doubled his strength; so that he swam away, and split the eagle to his neck, making literally a spread eagle of him,' a creature, as the learned Prelate properly observes, ' otherwise known only in heraldry.' that he could not work himself out, but perished and putrified on the spot. The carcase, which was a long while decaying, and filled a great part of that narrow channel, made it almost impassable by its intolerable stench. Much stress is placed by the sceptics on the fact that Krantz, the missionary, who wrote the History of Greenland, sneered at the whole story: but Krantz repeats many litle traits with such animation as to show that he was not a 'whole-hog' infidel; and it is to him that we are indebted for the interesting particular of the kraken's alluring little fishes by the emission of a delicious exhalation. Besides, what is Mister Krantz, after all, arrayed against the battalion of brother-authors on the subject! See how Knud Leems, the learned professor of Laplandic, and one of the most exact of the modern ichthyologists, see how he describes this mighty but unwieldy mass of animated substance, in a book which was annotated by no less a man than Ernest Gunner, the learned and scientific Bishop of Drontheim, Now, in a sage discussion of this tenor, it may be necessary to quote Leems at length, in his description of a fish whose form and magnitude of body, he asserts, is so unusual, that the sea does not produce a similar prodigy Similar futile arguments have been applied, and with equal propriety, to the fact of no mariners having seen dead krakens; or at least making no record in their logbooks of such an occurrence. But this is a shallow argument against their existence; for who will say, because the body of a dead ass is rare, that there are no asses? By a law of Nature, large animals produce but few young; and it is a singular and rather unaccountable fact in natural history, that scarcely a creature of rank is ever found lying dead which had not come the water, as delighting in the depths, where 'The said fish is very seldom seen above to its death by some violent means. But, quiet and almost immoveable it is said to hide as if to shame and silence the opposition- itself, environed with an incalculable number declaimers, there is actually an attested in-of every kind of fish. When the fisherman, stance of the defunct body of a kraken searching the sea in order to find a fishy bothaving been found upon the Norwegian tom, arrives by accident at the place where coast. The details of this important inci- this monster is skulking in the bottom below, dent were carefully drawn up by the Rev-has met there, that he has found a place that is he thinks, from the great number of fish he erend Mr. Friis; and the Reverend Mr. the most fit for fishing; but when the monster Friis was a worshipful consistorial assessor, that lies hid, troubled with the plummet that is let down, begins to move and gradually get sioning that double-shadow which the Teuup, which is easily ascertained from the space tones designate doppel-ganger, may have that is between the bottom and the boat be-given birth to the tales of the kraken. coming gradually less, he finds that it was not There are those who would recognize the a bottom as is believed, but an immense fish that was hid below. Meantime the fisherman kraken and Job's leviathan as cognates, is not solicitous about getting away, know-while others-lugging in Jonas-imagine ing that this monster is very slow in moving, the Cetus tribe capacious enough to account and advances so slowly, that scarcely within for all, under certain allowances; but surethe space of two hours he can rise from the ly no credible description of the inert mass bottom to the surface of the sea. Yet is he we have described, which merely floats in not altogether negligent of his situation, findthe calmest weather, and has so little moing by the plummet that the monster, gradually emerging, is now at no great distance tion as hardly to vary the apparent dimenfrom the boat. And, without delay, the fisher- sions of the islet knobs it exposes above man having just got away, he begins to ap-water, can at all refer to a fierce animal pear above the water with huge and monstrous which might be hooked; to say nothing of claws, of a variety of sizes and shapes, giving his terrible teeth, squamose armor, smoking the idea of a wood, thick with different trees nostrils, hard heart, power, nor comely prostripped of their bark; at first erect in the air, but soon after complicated. The species of portion. this monster, how horrid it is and deformed, scarcely can those who have seen it express with words. The inhabitants of Finmark and Nordland call this monster Kraken; elsewhere through Norway, especially among those of Carmesund, in the diocese of Christiansand, it is called Brygden.' Here, then, is evidence sufficiently circumstantial, one would think, to stagger the most incredulous skeptic as to the existence of the stupendous kraken; and such of our readers as place implicit confidence therein, must never be at a loss for a topic to excite astonishment. on Still less can we hand out the whale, which no more resemble Isaiah's 'Or that sea beast Invests the sea.' Shakspeare could not have been thinking of the lazy passive kraken, when Oberon commands Puck, who could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, to go on an errand, and be back again Ere the leviathan can swim a league.' The accounts of the kraken leave us in no doubt as to its nature, for it is by no means analogous either to the whale tribe, or any kind of fishes; it is assuredly, the contrary, one of the mollusca order or family of worms peculiar to the sea. There is a very large skate-built fish among the queer marine animals represented on the map of Iceland drawn up by Andreas Velleius, in 1585, and thus described-Skautubvalur, tota cartilaginea; raiæ aligno modo similis; sed infinitis modis maior. Insulæ speciem, cúm apparet, præ se fert, On these grounds we are inclined to look alis naves evertit.' 'Tis true that, though to the sepia tribe for a prototype of the krawe have sailed for it, and seen comely spe- ken, especially since monstrous specimens of cimens of the Sepia octopus, armed with a the Cephalopod have been recorded for ages. dreadful apparatus of holders and emboli Athenæus, followed by Kircher, mentions for fastening upon and conveying their prey some pretty sizable ones as frequenting the to the mouth, we never fell in with the co- Sicilian seas; and Ælian may be referred lossal cuttle-fish, with suckers the size of to for more. The ancients were wont to pot-lids and arms the thickness of a mizen- designate such creatures as polypi, on acmast, such as snapped up three men belong-count of their multiplicity of limbs; and ing to Captain Magnus Den, 'homme re- from their accounts of the acetabula, or spectable et véridique.' Yet very large specimens of this order may exist; and from some possible optical illusion, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere, occa suckers, with which the arms of the great polypus were furnished, it is evident that it must have been nearly allied to a family of animals at present distinguished as sepiæ, |