The Savannah morning news., 1902-07-20

Ever and again, this cock-sure world
of ours, toddling along on it's self-con-
fident way. is brought to sudden stop
by some little happening that makes US
realize with a sudden start how blind
ly we walk on the edge of mystery
Such a happening was it that has
been brought about by three drunken
negro fishermen of Bermuda-as mean
instruments as nature could pick out
to teach the world something new of
her wonderful ways and to give us
glimpse of the unrevealed marvels of
creation.
Out of an abyss of the tropic ocean
the three pulled the first true deep sea
creature ever to be taken and kept
alive. And with that capture the men
of science have been almost forced to
accept the belief that somewhere in the
deepest depths of the deep seas there
lives true sea serpent-the great ell
like form, swimming with exceptional
swiftness and of unknown dimensions"
as Doctors Bean and Goode of the
United States Fish Commission put it
in their official report in discussing the
theory that somewhere in unknown
chasms of the ocean there may exist
such a monster as that. of which men
have talked since the days of Pliny
This creature that has been dragged
from its black home of eternal night to
lie gasping in glass tank to be seen
by tens of thousands-the first time a
human eye ever has seen its kinds
not great In size, for it's extreme length
when 1t eXerts its entire and startling
power of expansion is not more than
six or possibly seven feet. But its as
pect is so thoroughly that of the Pit.
so Satanic, SO grotesquely impossible.
that the fchthyologists who have stud
led 1t up to this time have become
converts to- the belief in the sea SER
pent. For men are convinced now that
II there can be such things in the ma
rine CULTS off our coasts, and if they
can exist without letting science with
It's grappleS and dredges and sounding
wires and travis ever get a glimpse of
them, there is ample reason for believ
ing that vast creatures of ASPECT still
more fantastic and frightful swim far
below the surface. rising to the sun
llght only in epochal periods to terrify
the human mites that see them, and
to flee again as terrified themselves by
the binding light of day and the noises
of the upper world.
What Is 1t.
Inc creature mas Deen Identified only
tentatively as yet as to species and
genus. Prof. Spencer of the New York
Aquarium, to whom it was sent, be-
| lieves that it is the same kind of form
that was seen dead on the surface of
| the Caribbean Sea off the Cuban coast
by Richardson in 1874 during the fam
Gus exploring voyage of the Erebus and
Terror. If this conjecture is correct,
as it probably is. for Prof. Spencer is
n Nan nh Nf
is entitled to the name Channomureana
Vittata. That classification puts it
into the strange Moray family, the
huge and ferocious eel-like fish that
have been infamous since the days of
ancient Rome, when certain of the spe-
cies were kept in ponds and fed with
living men by their owners who
thought that their flesh became the
more delicious from this human diet.
No man who saw this fish wondered
at the terror that nearly drove the ne
groes who caught it out of their boat
when they saw what 1T was that they
had hooked. Finless, wrinkled, gulp-
ing ceaselessly with a baggy, ophidian
| throat it lies, a bloated, venomously
evil thing, turning its weird head in
reptilian motions. Tiny black beads of
| eyes, scarcely so large as pin heads,
| glimmer out of its dark head set so
near the tip of its jaws that. were it
not for their baleful light, one would
not dream that they could be anything
except nostrils.
The head has a shape quite inde-
scribable. 1t is as formless as a mass
that has been stepped on and then par
TALLY Strengthened out, roughly and
carelessly. Not that there is much
head to it. Most of it is taken up with
cape. The observer gets no oDpor-
tunity to overlook that. For the fish