Lo! (12 page)

The “blonde beast of Patagonia,” which was supposed to be a huge ground sloth, parts of which are now in various museums, attracted attention, in the year 1899. See the
Zoologist,
August, 1899. Specimens of the blonde’s hide were brought to England, by Dr. F.P. Moreno, who believed that the remains had been preserved for ages. We prefer to think otherwise: so we note that Dr. Ameghino, who got specimens of the hide from the natives, said that it was their story that they had killed it.

There was a volley of monsters from some other world, about the time of the Charleston earthquake, or some one thing skipped around with marvelous agility, or it is that, just before the quake, there were dull times for the newspapers. So many observations in places far apart can be reconciled by thinking that not a creature but explorers in a construction, had visited this earth. They may have settled down in various places. However, it is pretty hard to be reconciled to our reconciliations.

New York Sun,
Aug. 19, 1886—a horned monster, in Sandy Lake, Minnesota. More details, in the
London
(Ontario)
Advertiser
—Chris. Engstein fired a shot at it, but missed. Then came dispatches from the sea coast. According to one of them, Mr. G.P. Putnam, Principal of a Boston grammar school, had seen a monster, in the sea, at Gloucester. In
Science,
8-258, Mr. B.A. Colona, of the U. S. Coast Survey, writes that, upon the 29th of August, he had seen an unknown creature in the sea off Cape Cod. In the New York newspapers, early in September, a monster was reported as having been seen at sea, off Southport, and off Norwalk, Conn.: in Michigan, in the Connecticut River, and in the Hudson River. The conventional explanation is that this was simply an epidemic of fancied observations. Most likely some of them were only contagions.

There’s a yarn, or a veritable account, in the
New York Times,
June 10, 1880—monstrous, dead thing, floating on the sea, bottom up. Sailors rowed to it, and climbed up its sides. They danced on its belly. That’s a merry, little story, but I know a more romantic one. It seems that a monster was seen from a steamship. Then the lonely thing mistook the vessel for a female of his species. He overwhelmed her with catastrophic endearments.

But I am avoiding stories of traditional serpentine monsters of the sea. One reason is that collections of these stories are easily available. The astronomer has not lived, who has ever collected and written a book upon data not sanctioned by the dogmas of his cult, but my slightly favorable opinion of biologists continues, and I note that a big book of Sea Serpent stories was written by Dr. Oudemans, Director of the Zoo, at The Hague, Holland. When that book came out, a review of it, in
Nature,
was not far from abusive. Away back in the year 1848, conventionalists were outraged, because of the source of one of these stories. For the account, by Capt. M’Quhae, of H.M.S.
Daedalus,
of a huge, unknown creature, said by him to have been seen by him, in the ocean, Aug. 6, 1848, see the
Zoologist,
vol. 6. Someone else who bothered the conventionalists was the Captain of the Royal Yacht, the
Osborne,
who, in an official report to the admiralty, told of having seen a monster—not serpent-like—off the coast of Sicily, May 2, 1877. See the London
Times,
June 14, 1877, and
Land and Water,
Sept. 8, 1877. The creature was turtle-like, visible part of the body about fifty feet long. There was an attempt to correlate this appearance with a submarine eruption, but I have found that this eruption—in the Gulf of Tunis—had occurred in February.

The suggestion was that in the depths of the ocean may live monsters, which are occasionally cast to the surface by submarine disturbances.

It is a convenience. Accept that unknown sea monsters exist, and how account for the relatively few observations upon things so conspicuous? That they live in ocean depths, and come only occasionally to the surface.

I have gone into the subject of deep-sea dredging, and, in museums, have looked at models of deep-sea creatures, but I have never heard of a living thing of considerable size that has been brought up from profound ocean depths. William Beebe has never brought up anything of the kind. On his
Arcturus Adventure,
anything that got away from him, and his hooks and his nets and his dredges, must have been small and slippery. It seems that anything with an exposure of wide surfaces could not withstand great pressure. However, this is only reasoning. Before the days of deep-sea dredging, scientists reasoned that nothing at all could live far down in the sea. Also, now most of them would argue that, because of the great difference between pressures, any living thing coming up from ocean depths would burst. Not necessarily so, according to Beebe. Some of the deep-sea creatures that he brought up were so unconventional as to live several hours, and to show no sign of disruption. So, like everybody else, I don’t know what to think, but, rather uncommonly, I know that.

In October, 1883, there was a story in the newspapers—I take from the
Quebec Daily Mercury,
Oct. 7, 1883—of an unknown animal, which was seen by Capt. Seymour, of the bark
Hope On,
off the Pearl Islands, about fifty miles from Panama. In
Knowledge,
Nov. 30, 1883, Richard Proctor tells of this animal, and says that also it had been reported by officers of a steamship. This one was handsome. Anyway, it had a head like that of a “handsome horse.” It had either four legs or four “jointed fins.” Covered with a brownish hide, upon which were large, black spots. Circus-horseish. About twenty feet long. There was another story told, about the same time.
New Zealand Times,
Dec. 12, 1883—report by a sea captain, who had seen something like a turtle, sixty feet long, and forty feet wide.

Perhaps stories of turtle-backed objects of large size relate to submersible vessels. If there were no submersible vessels of this earth, in the year 1883, we think of submersibles from somewhere else. Why they should be so secretive, we can’t much inquire into now, because we are so much concerned with other concealments and suppressions. I suspect that, in other worlds, or in other parts of one existence, there is esoteric knowledge of the human beings of this earth, kept back from common knowledge. This is easily thinkable, because even upon this earth there is little knowledge of human beings.

There have been suggestions of an occult control upon the minds of the inhabitants of this earth. Let anybody who does not like the idea that his mind may be most subtly controlled, without his knowledge of it, think back to what propagandists did with his beliefs in the years 1914-18. Also he need not think so far back as that.

The standardized explanations by which conventional scientists have checked inquiry into alleged appearances of strange living things, in the ocean, are mentioned in the following record:

Something was seen, off the west coast of Africa, Oct. 17, 1912. Passengers on a vessel said that they had seen the head and neck of a monster. They appointed a committee to see to it that record should be made of their observations. In the
Cape Times
(Cape Town) Oct. 29, 1912, Mr. Wilmot, former member of the Cape Legislative Council, records this experience, saying that there is no use trying to think that four independent witnesses had seen nothing but a string of dolphins or a gigantic strand of sea weed, or anything else, except an unknown monster.

It’s the fishmonger of Worcester in his marine appearance.

In this field of reported observations, so successful has been a seeming control of minds upon this earth, and guidance into picturing nothing but a string of dolphins or a gigantic strand of seaweed, that, now that the ghost has been considerably rehabilitated—though in my own records of hundreds of unexplained occurrences, the ghost-like scarcely ever appears—the Sea Serpent is foremost in representing what is supposed to be the mythical. I don’t know how many books I have read, in each of which is pictured a long strand of sea weed, with the root-end bulbed and gnarled grotesquely like a head. I suppose that hosts of readers have been convinced by these pictures.

But, if a monster from somewhere else should arrive upon the land of this earth, and, perhaps being out of adaptation, should die upon land, probably it would not be seen. I have noted several letters to newspapers, by big-game hunters who had never heard of anybody coming upon a dead elephant. Sir Emerson Tennent has written that, though he had often inquired of Europeans and Cingalese, he had never heard of anybody who had seen the remains of an elephant in the forests of Ceylon. A jungle soon vegetates euphemisms around its obscenities, but the frank ocean has not the pruderies of a jungle.

Strange bones have often been found on land. They have soon been conventionalized. When bones of a monster are found, the patternmakers of a museum arrange whatever they can into conventional structures, and then fill in with plaster, colored differently, so that there shall be no deception. After a few years, these differences become undetectable. There is considerable dissatisfaction with the paleontologists. I notice in museums that, even when plaster casts are conspicuously labeled as nothing but plaster casts, some honest fellow has dug off chips to expose that there isn’t a bone in them.

What we’re looking for is an account of something satisfactorily monstrous, and not more or less in the distance: something that is not of paleontologic memory that has been jogged so plasterfully. The sea is the best field for data.

In the
Mems. Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc.,
1-418, is published a paper by Dr. Barclay, who tells of the remains of an unknown monster that had been cast up by the sea, in September, 1808, at Stronsa, one of the Orkneys. We’ve got ahold of something now that was well observed. As fast as they could, observers got rid of this hunk, which for weeks, under a summer sun, had been making itself evidential. But the evidence came back. So again the observers got a rope and towed it out to sea. Sultry day soon—a flop on the beach—more observations. According to different descriptions, in affidavits by inhabitants of Stronsa, the remains of this creature had six “arms,” or “paws,” or “wings.” There is a suggestion of stumps of fins here, but it is said that the bulk was “without the least resemblance or affinity to fish.” Dr. Barclay told that in his possession was part of the “mane” of the monster.

A perhaps similar bulk was, upon the 1st of December, 1896, cast upon the coast of Florida, twelve miles south of St. Augustine. There were appendages, or ridges, upon it, and at first these formations were said to be stumps of tentacles. But, in the
American Naturalist,
31-304, Prof. A.E. Verrill says that this suggestion that the mass of flesh was the remains of an octopus, is baseless. The mass was 21 feet long, 7 feet wide and 4½ feet high: estimated weight seven tons. Reproductions of several photographs are published in the
American Naturalist.
Prof. Verrill says that, despite the great size of this mass, it was only part of an animal. He argues that it was part of the head of a creature like a sperm whale, but he says that it was decidedly unlike the head of any ordinary sperm whale, having no features of a whale’s head. Also, according to a description in the
New York Herald,
Dec. 2, 1896, the bulk seems not to have been whale-like. “The hide is of a light pink color, nearly white, and in the sunshine has a distinct silvery appearance. It is very tough and cannot be penetrated even with a sharp knife.” A pink monster, or an appalling thing with the look of a cherub, is another of our improvements upon conventional biology.

For a yarn, or an important record, of a reptile of “prehistoric size and appearance,” said to have been found on the beach of the Gulf of Fonseca, Salvador, see the
New York Herald Tribune,
June 16, 1928. It was about ninety feet long, marked with black and white stripes, and was “exceedingly corpulent.” Good-natured, fat monsters, too, are new to me.

I have searched especially for sea stories of hairy, or fur-covered monsters. Such creatures would not be sea animals, in the exclusive sense that something covered with scales might be. If unknown, they would have to be considered inhabitants of lands. Then up comes the question—what lands?

English Mechanic,
April 7, 1899—that, according to Australian newspapers, the captain of a trading vessel had arrived in Sydney, with parts of an unknown monster. “The hide, or skin, of the monster was covered with hair.”

The arrival of these remains is reported in the
Sydney Morning Herald,
in issues from Feb. 23 to March 2, 1899. It is said that, according to Capt. Oliver, of the trading ship
Emu,
he had found, upon the beach of Suarro Island, the carcass of a two-headed monster.

That is just a little too interesting.

We find that the reporter who told this story dropped the most interesting part of it, in his subsequent accounts, which were upon two skulls, a vertebra, and a rib bone: but he was determined to discredit the find, and told that the bones were obviously fossils, implying that the Captain had invented a story of bodies of two animals that had recently been alive.

When we come upon assurances that a mystery has been solved, we go on investigating.

In the
Sydney Daily Telegraph,
February 28, it is said that an attempt to identify the bones as fossils had been refuted. Professional and amateur scientists had accepted an invitation to examine the bones, and, according to the testimony of their noses, these things decidedly were not fossils. Each skull was more than two feet long, and was shaped somewhat like a horse’s, but upon it was a beak. There are beaked whales, but these remains were not remains of beaked whales, if be accepted Captain Oliver’s unsupported statements as to hairiness and great size. It is said that no specimens of the hairy hide had been taken, because all parts, except the scraped bones, of these bulks that had been lying under a tropical sun weren’t just what one would want to take along in a small ship. According to Capt. Oliver, one of the bodies was sixty feet long. The largest beaked whales are not known to exceed thirty feet in length.