Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-07-19
DEEP-SEA MONSTER
The Most Uncanny Ever
Caught Alive.
soi
A REAL WHAT rs IT"
NEW YORK HAS IT IN THE PUB
Lie AQUARIUM.
Channomurena is It's Name, but That
Will Probably Soon Be
Shortened.


Ever and again this cock-sure world Of
ours, toddling along on its seif-confldent
way, is brought to a sudden stop by some
little happening that makes us realize with
| sudden start how blindly 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 instru-
ments as Nature could pick out to teach
the world something new of her wonderful
ways and to give US a glimpse of the I'M
revealed marveIS 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 eel-lke form, swimming with
exceptional swiftness and of unknown di-
mensions." 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
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 a glass tank to be seen by tens
of thousands-the first time a human eye
ever has seen it's kinds not great in size,
for it's extreme length when it exerts its
entire and startling power of expansion Is
not more than six or possibly seven feet.
But its aspect is thoroughly that of the
Pit, so Satanic, so grotesquely impossible,
that the ichthyelogists who have studied it
up to this time have become converts to
the belief in the sea serpent. For men are
convinced now that If there can be such
things in the marine CULTS off our coasts.
and if they can exist without letting
science with all it's grapples and dredges
and sounding wires and travis ever get a
glimpse of them, there is ample reason for
believing that vast creatures of aspect still
more fantastic and frightful swim far
below the surface, rising to the sunlight
only in epochal periods to terrify the hui
man mites that see them, and to fee again
as terrified themselves by the binding
light of day and the noises of the upper
world.
What is TIP
The creature has been identified only ten
tatively as yet to species and genus.
Professor Spencer of the New York aqua
tr1um, to whom it was sent, believes 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 famous exploring voyage of the
Erebus and Terror. If this conjecture is
Is,
Spencer is an observer Of rare experience,
the fish is entitled to the name Channomu-
rena vittata. That classification puts it
into the strange Moray family, the huge
and feroei9us eel-like fish that have been
infamous since the days of ancient Rome
when certain of the species were kept in
ponds and fed with living men by their
owners, who thought that their flesh be-
came the more delicious from this human
diet.
No man who saw this fish wondered at
the terror that nearly drove the negroes
who caught it out of their boat when they
saw what it was that they had hooked.
Finless wrirkled. gulping ceaselessly with
a bagGy, ophidian throat. it lies, a bloated,
venomously evil thing, turning it's weird
head in reptlian motions. Tiny black beads
of eyes, scarcely so large as pin heads,
gimmer out of its dark head. set so near
the tip of its jaws that, were it not for
their baiefui light, one would not dream
that they could be anything except nostrils
The head has shape quite indescriba bic
1t is as formless as a mass that has been
stepped on and then partially 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 opportuni-
ty to overlook that. For the fish has a
habit of opening its jaws constantly appar-
entity swallowing air. Those gaping jaws
extended far back into the very body of the
thing apparently. Never a creature known
to man has jaws so overhuge.
Where its gills should be- the observers
ldlltu " any. But AFTER a lew
utes of close watching they saw little
swelling work up and down. like slippery
knot of muscle under the shiny skin. And
then suddenly tube peered out, protruded
and slipped back. Continued observation
showed that the tube was a true siphon
and that it takes the place of gills in this
deep sea thing.
1t does not swim: 1t writhes. At times
1t stretches itself like worm till its high
ridged body is quite thin and enormously
elongat ted. Again it shrinks and congresses
it's great form until, with hundred wriu-
killed. folds over it, it lies shrunken and even
more evil in its vague mass than it is when
it lies extended, with it's head raised at
strange angles with the body peering wick
edly at everything within its ken.
Shrunken and wrinked, it looks like
puff adder-equally thick-set, with the rem
the head. Expanded to full length, its head
seems far greater than it's body and then
the resemblance to the venomous serpents
is complete
Now and then it raises itself in the vater
and holds itself upright, resting only on its
tail. Then it is the cobra in attitude and
expression.
These are not the only serpentine charac-
teristics of the fish. In its absolute lack
of fins 1t approaches the class of reptiles
so closely in appearance and build that
one is inclined not to scott at the many
and various accounts Of sea monsters, ali
agreeing in describing them as snakes. This
thing, in every aspect, is far more snake
than fish.
A True Deep-Sea Form.
There is no doubt that it is a true deem
sea form of kind that rarely ventures
from the vast depths, where it makes it's
home among unknown forms that probably
are still more strange, more terrible and
more incredibly. misshapen than even it,
Where it was caught there is a high ledge
Of coral and limestone, rising sheer ont of
a chasm 1920 feet deep. No doubt the
Channomurena writhc' its way upward
to the top of the ledge more by accident
than design, for rarely do the fish that
swim 200 fathoms deep rise near to the
surface voluntarily. Indeed. few Of the
deep-sea jewellers can do so and live. for
their air ladders are adapted by nature
to withstand the enormous pressures of
water where they dwell, and when thew
ascend near the surface the. effect of the
decreased pressure on them is lust az the
effect of ascending to high attitudes in a
balloon is on man. Blood bursts forth
from ears hand nose and finally the ewes
Were it possible to ascend stiii higher the
aeronaut would burst. Just SO is n with
the fish. Those that are seized by deen-sea
travis and dredges always come to the s,,r-
face split and torn open, with their ewes
actually blown out of their heads and their