I believe that in every case so far cited from Pontoppidan, as well as that given by Olaus Magnus, the supposed coils or protuberances of the serpent's body, were only so many porpoises swimming in line in accordance with their habit before mentioned. If an upraised head, like that of a horse, was seen preceding them, it was either unconnected with them, or it certainly was not that of a snake; for no serpent could throw its body into those vertical undulations. The form of the vertebræ in the ophidians renders such a movement impossible. All their flexions are horizontal; the curving of their body is from side to side, not up and down.
The sea-monster seen by Egede was of an entirely different kind; and his account of it—let sceptics deride it as they may—is worthy of attention and careful consideration. The Rev. Hans Egede, known as "The Apostle of Greenland," was superintendent of the Christian missions to that country. He was a truthful, pious, and single-minded man, possessing considerable powers of observation, and a genuine love of natural history. He wrote two books on the products, people, and natural history of Greenland,[ [28] ] and his statements therein are modest, accurate, and free from exaggeration. His illustrations are little, if at all, superior in style of art to the two Japanese wood-cuts shown on [page 29], but they bear the same unmistakable signs of fidelity which characterise those of the Japanese.
In his 'Journal of the Missions to Greenland' this author tell us that—
"On the 6th of July, 1734, there appeared a very large and frightful sea monster, which raised itself so high out of the water that its head reached above our main-top. It had a long, sharp snout, and spouted water like a whale; and very broad flappers. The body seemed to be covered with scales, and the skin was uneven and wrinkled, and the lower part was formed like a snake. After some time the creature plunged backwards into the water, and then turned its tail up above the surface, a whole ship-length from the head. The following evening we had very bad weather."
The high character of the narrator would lead us to accept his statement that he had seen something previously unknown to him (he does not say it was a sea-serpent) even if we could not explain or understand what it was that he saw. Fortunately, however, the sketch made by Mr. Bing, one of his brother missionaries, has enabled us to do this. We must remember that in his endeavour to portray the incident he was dealing with an animal with the nature of which he was unacquainted, and which was only partially, and for a very short time, within his view. He therefore delineated rather the impression left on his mind than the thing itself. But although he invested it with a character that did not belong to it, his drawing is so far correct that we are able to recognise at a glance the distorted portrait of an old acquaintance, and to say unhesitatingly that Egede's sea-monster was one of the great calamaries which have since been occasionally met with, but which have only been believed in and recognised within the last few years. That which Mr. Egede believed to be the creature's head was the tail part of the cuttle, which goes in advance as the animal swims, and the two side appendages represent very efficiently the two lobes of the caudal fin. In propelling itself to the surface the squid raised this portion of its body out of the water to a considerable height, an occurrence which I have often witnessed, and which I have elsewhere described (see pp. 23 and 27). The supposed tail, which was turned up at some distance from the other visible portion of the body, after the latter had sunk back into the sea, was one of the shorter arms of the cuttle, and the suckers on its under side are clearly and conspicuously marked. Egede was, of course, in error in making the "spout" of water to issue from the mouth of his monster. The out-pouring jet, which he, no doubt, saw, came from the locomotor tube, and the puff of spray which would accompany it as the orifice of the tube rose to the surface of the water is sketched with remarkable truthfulness. In quoting Egede, Pontoppidan gives a copy (so-called) of this engraving, but his artist embellished it so much as to deprive it of its original force and character, and of the honestly drawn points which furnish proofs of its identity.
Pontoppidan records other supposed appearances of the sea-serpent, but from the date of his history I know of no other account of such an occurrence until that of an animal "apparently belonging to this class," which was stranded on the Island of Stronsa, one of the Orkneys, in the year 1808:—
"According to the narrative, it was first seen entire, and measured by respectable individuals. It measured fifty-six feet in length, and twelve in circumference. The head was small, not being a foot long from the snout to the first vertebra; the neck was slender, extending to the length of fifteen feet. All the witnesses agree in assigning it blow-holes, though they differ as to the precise situation. On the shoulders something like a bristly mane commenced which extended to near the extremity of the tail. It had three pairs of fins or paws connected with the body; the anterior were the largest, measuring more than four feet in length, and their extremities were something like toes partially webbed. The skin was smooth and of a greyish colour; the eye was of the size of a seal's. When the decaying carcass was broken up by the waves, portions of it were secured (such as the skull, the upper bones of the swimming paws, &c.) by Mr. Laing, a neighbouring proprietor, and some of the vertebræ were preserved and deposited in the Royal University Museum, Edinburgh, and in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. An able paper," says Dr. Robert Hamilton, in his account of it,[ [29] ] "on these latter fragments and on the wreck of the animal was read by the late Dr. Barclay to the Wernerian Society, and will be found in Vol. I. of its Transactions, to which we refer. We have supplied a wood-cut of the sketch" (of which I give a facsimile here) "which was taken at the time, and which, from the many affidavits proffered by respectable individuals, as well as from other circumstances narrated, leaves no manner of doubt as to the existence of some such animal."
