III. Would-be Sea-Serpents. (continued 2)

“We call the whole crew, and the captain as well as some officers run to. But the animal does not appear again. Nevertheless five of us had seen the animal distinctly, so that a violent altercation arose, when one of the officers said we evidently were mistaken, because the sea-serpent did not exist.”

“Nobody of us, it is true, could affirm that it was a sea-serpent. We could only firmly maintain that what we had seen, agreed in all respects with the shape of a serpent.”

“The second officer, who joined in the conversation, declared to have observed in 1871 near the coast of Australia, a sea-serpent which was several meters in length, and when this statement too was called in question, the quarrel got warmer and warmer, and, as it generally happens in such cases, every one kept his own opinion, and the world did not get any the wiser for it.”

“Does the sea-serpent exist, or does he not? This is a problem which has been answered more than once in the most affirmative manner, and also in a negative sense. I have heard the question disputed on more than one voyage.”

In order to obtain more particulars about the animal, I wrote to Mr. Verschuur Oct. 26th., 1889, directing to him the following questions:

“Did the features of the “snake” make on you the impression to be those of a mammal, like those of a seal or sea-lion, though the pointed head more resembled that of a snake?”

“Or had the head, though being much larger, more the shape of that of an eel?”

“Were there just behind the head a pair of fins, as eels have?”

“Why did the visible part make on you the impression to be a “neck”. You speak of a “neck” of a snake. Was the diameter near the head smaller than that just above the water, as if the animal was still thicker under water?”

“Or did you observe the contrary?”

“Was the “snake” perfectly round, or was it provided on its back with a fin, as in eels?”

“What colour had your snake, and had the belly and the back the same colour?”

“Did you observe any eyes, nostrils, ears, ear holes, gills, whiskers, or any other appendages?”

“These are all questions which a zoologist wants to have answered in order to determine somewhat, what animal may have been seen by you.”

Mr. Verschuur had the courtesy to send me an early answer Oct. 30th., 1889. The part of this letter referring to my questions runs as follows:

“I greatly regret to say that my answers will not help you much. The distance at which I saw this strange animal was too great, and the appearance too short, to observe anything of the particulars stated by you.”

“The part which we saw rise out of the sea had, if my memory does not deceive me, the thickness of a full-grown upper-arm, and the length of from 1 to 1¹⁄₂ meter.”

“The head seemed to be round, and of the common shape of a snake’s head, i. e. having nearly the tapering shape of the “cobra” or of the rattlesnake.”

“Of scales, eyes, fins, etc., I could observe nothing, during this short appearance. The colour seemed to me to be a greyish one.”

“I regret not being able to give you more details than those written by me in my book of travels.”

I think this animal was of the eel-tribe, the dimensions were too small even to admit the supposition that it was a spawn of the sea-serpent.

We observe that many so-called great sea-serpents are to be explained by reference to known animals. There are, however, a great many sea-serpents which don’t answer to the description of any known being at all, unless we venture upon a suggestion which is either wrong, forced, or premature, and which can be accepted only with a smile or a shrug of the shoulders.

Some sea-serpent explainers are in the habit of explaining one single sea-serpent, say by reference to a row of porpoises, and then try to account for others by this suggestion, the upshot of which is that the explainer does no longer see his way clear of the difficulties which beset him, and driven to his wits’ end, cuts the Gordian knot, leaving a great many sea-serpents unexplained.

Others, like Mr. Gosse, Mr. Andrew Wilson, and Mr. Henry Lee, were prepossessed with opinions which made of every sea-serpent a Plesiosaurus, an extraordinarily developed Hydrophis, or a large Calamary (Architeuthis).

But none of them hit on the plan to put all the accounts, tales, and reports of this great unknown animal side by side, to point out the statements which are immediately recognizable as strange, or explicable by reference to some known animal, and finally to decide which of the known animals may have been bold enough to present itself as a deceitful serpentine creature, or, if the result is negative and leads to the conclusion that the sea-serpent does not belong to any known species of animal, to decide, what kind of animal does exist, though unknown to zoologists! And to this inquiry we pass now.