“In the Indian Ocean, at a certain distance from land, a great many water-serpents, from twelve to fifteen inches in length, are to be seen rising above the surface of the water. When these serpents are seen they are an indication that the coast is exactly two degrees distant. We saw some of these serpents, for the first time, on the evening of the 9th of September; on the 11th we landed in the harbour of Bombay.”[279]
These sea-snakes are reputed to be mostly, if not entirely, venomous. Their motion in the water is by undulation in a horizontal, not in a vertical, direction; they breathe with lungs; their home is on the surface, and they would perish if confined for any considerable period beneath it.
Fig. 78.—Scoliophis Atlanticus. Killed on the Sea-shore near Boston, in 1817,
and at that time supposed to be the young of the Sea-Serpent.
It is an open question whether conger eels may not exist, in the ocean depths, of far greater dimensions than those of the largest individuals with which we are acquainted. Major Wolf, who was stationed at Singapore while I was there in 1880, gave me information which seems to corroborate this idea. He stated that when dining some years before with a retired captain of the 39th Regiment, then resident at Wicklow, the latter informed him that, having upon one occasion gone to the coast with his servant in attendance on him, the latter asked permission to cease continuing on with the captain in order that he might bathe. Having received permission, he proceeded to do so, and swam out beyond the edge of the shallow water into the deep. A coastguardsman, who was watching him from the cliff above, was horrified to see something like a huge fish pursuing the man after he had turned round towards the shore. He was afraid to call out lest the man should be perplexed. The man, however, heard some splash or noise behind him, and looked round and saw a large head, like a bull-dog’s head, projecting out of the water as if to seize him. He made a frantic rush shoreways, and striking the shallow ground, clambered out as quickly as possible, but broke one of his toes from the violence with which he struck the ground. This story was confirmed by a Mr. Burbidge, a farmer, who stated that on one occasion when he himself was bathing within a mile or so of the same spot, the water commenced swirling around him, and that, being alarmed, he swam rapidly in, and was pursued by something perfectly corresponding with that described by the other narrator, and which he supposed to be a large conger eel. In each case the length was estimated at twenty feet. Mr. Gosse gives the greatest length recorded at ten feet.
Were we only acquainted with a small and certain proportion of the sea-serpent stories, we might readily imagine that they had been originated by a sight of some monstrous conger, but there are details exhibited by them, taken as a whole, which forbid that idea. We must therefore search elsewhere for the affinities of the sea-serpent.
And first as to those authorities who believe and who disbelieve in its existence.
Professor Owen, in 1848, attacked the Dædalus story in a very masterly manner, and extended his arguments so as to embrace the general non-probability of other stories which had previously affirmed it. He was, in fact, its main scientific opponent.
Sir Charles Lyell, upon the other hand, was, I believe, persuaded of its existence from the numerous accounts which he accumulated on the occasion of his second visit to America, especially evidence procured for him by Mr. J. W. Dawson, of Pictou, as to one seen, in 1844, at Arisaig, near the north-east end of Nova Scotia, and as to another, in August 1845, at Merigomish, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Agassiz also gave in his adhesion to it. “I have asked myself, in connection with this subject, whether there is not such an animal as the sea-serpent. There are many who will doubt the existence of such a creature until it can be brought under the dissecting knife; but it has been seen by so many on whom we may rely, that it is wrong to doubt any longer. The truth is, however, that if a naturalist had to sketch the outlines of an icthyosaurus or plesiosaurus from the remains we have of them, he would make a drawing very similar to the sea-serpent as it has been described. There is reason to think that the parts are soft and perishable, but I still consider it probable that it will be the good fortune of some person on the coast of Norway or North America to find a living representative of this type of reptile, which is thought to have died out.”