'Dum vocale maris monstrum natat æquore triton,
Neptuni pecus, in funes forte incidit extra
Demissos navim';"
which I venture to translate as follows:
A triton, vocal monster of the deep,
One of a flock of Neptune's scaly sheep,
Was caught, whilst swimming o'er the watery plain,
By lines which fishers from their boat had lain.
"Therefore," Ælian concludes, "if he, the omniscient god, pronounces that there are tritons, it does not behove us to doubt their existence."
Sir J. Emerson Tennent, in his 'Natural History of Ceylon,' quoting from the Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, mentions that the annalist of the exploits of the Jesuits in India gravely records that seven of these monsters, male and female, were captured at Manaar, in 1560, and carried to Goa, where they were dissected by Demas Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy, "and their internal structure found to be in all respects conformable to the human." He also quotes Valentyn, one of the Dutch colonial chaplains, who, in his account of the Natural History of Amboyna,[ [46] ] embodied in his great work on the Netherlands' possessions in India, published in 1727,[ [47] ] devoted the first section of his chapter on the fishes of that island to a minute description of the "Zee-Menschen," "Zee-Wyven," and mermaids, the existence of which he warmly insists on as being beyond cavil. He relates that in 1663, when a lieutenant in the Dutch service was leading a party of soldiers along the sea-shore in Amboyna, he and all his company saw the mermen swimming at a short distance from the beach. They had long and flowing hair of a colour between grey and green. Six weeks afterwards the creatures were again seen by him and more than fifty witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight. "If any narrative in the world," adds Valentyn, "deserves credit it is this; since not only one, but two mermen together were seen by so many eye-witnesses. Should the stubborn world, however, hesitate to believe it, it matters nothing, as there are people who would even deny that such cities as Rome, Constantinople, or Cairo, exist, merely because they themselves have not happened to see them. But what are such incredulous persons," he continues, "to make of the circumstance recorded by Albrecht Herport[ [48] ] in his account of India, that a merman was seen in the water near the church of Taquan on the morning of the 29th of April, 1661, and a mermaid at the same spot the same afternoon? Or what do they say to the fact that in 1714 a mermaid was not only seen but captured near the island of Booro, five feet, Rhineland measure, in height; which lived four days and seven hours, but, refusing all food, died without leaving any intelligible account of herself?" Valentyn, in support of his own faith in the mermaid, cites many other instances in which both "sea-men and sea-women" were seen and taken at Amboyna; especially one by a district visitor of the church, who presented it to the Governor Vanderstel. Of this "well-authenticated" specimen he gives an elaborate portrait amongst the fishes of the island,[ [49] ] with a minute description of each for the satisfaction of men of science.
The fame of this creature having reached Europe, the British minister in Holland wrote to Valentyn on the 28th of December, 1716, whilst the Emperor Peter the Great, of Russia, was his guest at Amsterdam, to communicate the desire of the Czar that the mermaid should be brought home from Amboyna for his inspection. To complete his proofs of the existence of mermen and merwomen, Valentyn points triumphantly to the historical fact that in Holland, in the year 1404, a mermaid was driven, during a tempest, through a breach in the dyke of Edam, and was taken alive in the lake of Purmer. Thence she was carried to Haarlem, where the Dutch women taught her to spin, and where several years after, she died in the Roman Catholic faith;—"but this," says the pious Calvinistic chaplain, "in no way militates against the truth of her story." The worthy minister citing the authority of various writers as proof that mermaids had in all ages been known in Gaul, Naples, Epirus, and the Morea, comes to the conclusion that as there are "sea-cows," "sea-horses," "sea-dogs," as well as "sea-trees," and "sea-flowers," which he himself had seen, there are no reasonable grounds for doubt that there may also be "sea-maidens" and "sea-men."
In an early account of Newfoundland,[ [50] ] Whitbourne describes a "maremaid or mareman," which he had seen "within the length of a pike," and which "came swimming swiftly towards him, looking cheerfully on his face, as it had been a woman. By the face, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, neck and forehead, it appeared to be so beautiful, and in those parts so well proportioned, having round about the head many blue streaks resembling hair, but certainly it was no hair. The shoulders and back down to the middle were square, white, and smooth as the back of a man, and from the middle to the end it tapered like a broad-hooked arrow." The animal put both its paws on the side of the boat wherein its observer sat, and strove much to get in, but was repelled by a blow.
In 1676, a description was given by an English surgeon named Glover, of an animal of this kind. The author did not designate it by any name, but the incident has the honour of being recorded in the Philosophical Transactions.[ [51] ] About three leagues from the mouth of the river Rappahannock, in America, while alone in a vessel, he observed, at the distance of about half a stone-throw, he says, "a most prodigious creature, much resembling a man, only somewhat larger, standing right up in the water, with his head, neck, shoulders, breast and waist, to the cubits of his arms, above water, and his skin was tawny, much like that of an Indian; the figure of his head was pyramidal and sleek, without hair; his eyes large and black, and so were his eyebrows; his mouth very wide, with a broad black streak on the upper lip, which turned upwards at each end like mustachios. His countenance was grim and terrible. His neck, shoulders, arms, breast and waist, were like unto the neck, arms, shoulders, breast and waist of a man. His hands, if he had any, were under water. He seemed to stand with his eyes fixed on me for some time, and afterwards dived down, and, a little after, rose at somewhat a greater distance, and turned his head towards me again, and then immediately fell a little under water, that I could discern him throw out his arms and gather them in as a man does when he swims. At last, he shot with his head downwards, by which means he cast his tail above the water, which exactly resembled the tail of a fish, with a broad fane at the end of it."
Thormodus Torfæus[ [52] ] maintains that mermaids are found on the south coast of Iceland, and, according to Olafsen,[ [53] ] two have been taken in the surrounding seas, the first in the earlier part of the history of that island, and the second in 1733. The latter was found in the stomach of a shark. Its lower parts were consumed, but the upper were entire. They were as large as those of a boy eight or nine years old. Both the cutting teeth and grinders were long and shaped like pins, and the fingers were connected by a large web. Olafsen was inclined to believe that these were human remains, but the islanders all firmly maintained that they were part of "a marmennill," by which name the mermaid is known among them.