“The swimming apparatus of this fish is not much developed, and reduced to a number of spines erect from the back and the belly.
“The pectoral fins, which are immediately behind the eye, are also very small, so that we may conclude from this that this fish does not move much, and is not a good swimmer.
“It only inhabits the bottom of the sea. Its body decreases gradually backwards till it finishes in a string-like tail. The organs for breathing are not much developed. Six slits (gill apertures?) allow the water to enter.
“The colour of the fish (the size of which we do not find in our authority) is velvet black.”
Before proceeding further I must point out that we may dismiss from our minds the possibility of the so-called sea-serpent being merely a large example of those marine serpents of which several species and numerous individuals are known to exist on the coast of many tropical countries, for these are rarely more than from four to six feet in length, although Dampier[277] mentions one which he saw on the northern coast of Australia, which was long (but the length is not specified) and as big as a man’s leg. He gives a curious instance of these biters being bit, which he observed not far from Scoutens Island, off New Guinea:—
“On the 23rd we saw two snakes, and the next morning another passing by us, which was furiously assaulted by two fishes that had kept in company five or six days. They were shaped like mackerel, and were about that bigness and length, and of a yellow-greenish colour. The snake swam away from them very fast, keeping his head above water. The fish snapped at his tail; but when he turned himself that fish would withdraw and another would snap; so that by turns they kept him employed. Yet he still defended himself, and swam away at a great pace, till they were out of sight.”
Leguat[278] speaks of a marine serpent, over sixty pounds in weight, which he and his comrades in misfortune captured and tasted, when marooned by order of the Governor of the Mauritius on some small island off the harbour, about six miles from the shore. He says:—
“It was a frightful sea-serpent, which we in our great simplicity took for a large lamprey or eel. This animal seemed to us very extraordinary, for it had fins, and we knew not that there were any such creatures as sea-serpents. Moreover, we had been so accustomed to discover creatures that were new to us, both at land and at sea, that we did not think this to be any other than an odd sort of eel that we never had seen before, yet which we could not but think more resembled a snake than an eel. In a word, the monster had a serpent or crocodile’s head, and a mouth full of hooked, long and sharp teeth.... When our purveyors came we related to them what had happened to us, and showed them the eel’s head, but they only said they had never seen the like.”
In spite of Leguat’s impression, I think it was only some species of conger eel.
Marine serpents are abundant on the Malay coast, and particularly so in the Indian Ocean. Niebuhr says:—