The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-09-24
THE SEA SERPENT.

1t IS the 1dSnlOn TO QeTlQe the sea
serpent, but If there had been half as
much contemporaneous evidence of
Jonah's great fish, as there is of a
gigantic snake of the ocean, the higher
critics would be slow to attack the
Scriptural story.
No one would doubt the evidence Of
the commander of Sir Robert Hart s
customs launch Lungtsing, supported
as it is by that of his second officer,
first engineer, first and second pilots
and fourteen seamen, upon any other
marine phenomenon than the sea SER
pent. But in this respect the people
on the launch are put in much the same
position as those aboard H. NJ. s.
Daedelus, (Capt. McQuhae) years ago,
who saw and reported in their ships
log and individually, a reptilian mon
ster of the same general characteristics
of the one seen by the officers and crew
of the Lungtsing. The public scoffed
at the Daedelus story, making the usual
talk ABOUT brand and vintage; yet the
officers of Her Majesty's ship officially
insisted that their log was correct and
showed drawings of the serpent made
by those who saw it. The reptile, it
should be added, was seen in the Medit-
erranean. S.sa
The first view of the sea serpent on
the American coast occurred in 1851
when reputable people, living on the
shores of Penobscot bay, reported it's
presence in those waters. Says a his |
tory of the first century of the United |
States: ''On the appearance of the SER
pent in Penobscot bay it was seen,
among others, by a respectable and |
ACKNOWLEDGMENT clergyman of the |
who, by request, prepared |
particular description of the animals !
and movements Several
persons were with him at the time and
had full view of the monster for some |
minutes. They saw him at rest on the
water and also saw him dart out to sea 7
with great velocity" Other witnesses
were Captains Little, Kent and Crab
Tree, al of them responsible and mat
citizens and sea-farers. =
reported the serpent during
the same year off Plymouth, Mass, and
1t was again seen off Gloucester and
About this time a sna...
reptile was caught and
|
Iect had ever been seen before by mod
ern scientists. In many important
1t looked like the great sea ser
pent, and judging from it's age and
structure the Boston ichthyologists de-
clared that its female progenitor must
have been over one hundred feet in
length.
While the British scientist, Sir
Charles Lyell, was in America he got h
the testimony of two Boston merchants,
Messrs. Perkins and Cabot, and of about
thirty others, who had seen the SER
pent close to shore. From time to time
the monster was reported in the Gulf
Stream and as far south as Cape Hat
,eras. United States Marshal Price and
Mrs. Price also saw and the former ,
described 1t in a letter to Judge Davis
If Massachusetts. Testimony under the
same head was given by five British
navy officers out yachting from Hall
Tax. In 1859 snake sixteen feet long l.
and resembling In color and other phys
cal peculiarities the monster seen near
Halifax and the New England coast
was cast ashore on Bermuda.
Norway has seen a good deal of the
marine reptile and so has the Mediter-
littoral. In fact few countries
bordering the sea are without stories or
traditions of a serpent, from fifty to
,ne hundred feet long, with protuber-
ances along the body and gigantic
head which, when the creature swims
the surface, is held high above the wa
ter. All descriptions tally, that of the
seen in Chinese waters last
month being of a type made familiar
by score of previous descriptions in
almost as many languages
The fact that science knows nothing
Of the mighty snake, save by deduction
from small specimens of what may be
their progeny, counts for little. Last |
summer over thirty fish new to science
were found in the waters of Hawaii.
Having been so long in finding the deni-
zens of the shadows and of the CONNER
cial fisheries, scientists have an excel |.
lent excuse for ignorance about the rare
of the vastly deep.
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