Molucca islands, Brazil, North America and
Europe, in the North Sea.  Its length is eight
spans, its head is oval, and the face resembles
that of a man.  It has an high forehead, little
eyes, a flat nose, and large mouth, but has no
chin, or ears.  It has two arms, which are
short, but without joints or elbows (like the
late Miss Biffin), with hands or paws, to each
of which there are four long fingers, which
are not very flexible (unlike Miss B.)
connected to each other by a membrane like
that of the foot of a goose. . . .  Their skin
is of a brownish-grey colour, and their
intestines are like those of a hog.  Their flesh
is as fat as pork, particularly the upper part
of their bodies; and this is a favourite dish
with the Indians, broiled upon a gridiron.
(Fancy ordering a broiled mermaid at
Blackwall!)  It makes a lamentable cry when
drawn out of the water (no wonder, with the
gridiron so extremely handy)."

Making mermaids a substitute for pork
seems common in Africa, for Edward Dapper,
in his description of that continent (page five
hundred and eighty-four), informs us that—
"In the sea of Angola, mermaids are
frequently catch'd which resemble the human
species.  They are taken in nets and killed
by the negroes, and are heard to shriek and
cry like women.  The inhabitants on that
coast eat their flesh, being very fond of it,
which they say is much like pork in taste.
The ribs of those animals are reckoned a
good styptic,"  (Too much of a styptic to have
a mermaid for a rib.)   Of the merman genus
is also the animal called the Monk-fish.
Caspar Peucerus vouches for having seen two of
these creatures, "with a human face and a
tonsure round his head"—on the first occasion,
in fifteen hundred and forty-nine, in the
Baltic Sea, not far from Haffnia, and in the
following year near Copenhagen.

Father Francis de Pavia says (in the
relation of Captain Uring; London, seventeen
hundred and twenty-seven), that "throughout
all the rivers of Zair the mermaid is found,
which from the middle upwards has some
resemblance of a woman: it has breasts,
nipples, hands, and arms, but downwards it is
altogether fish; its head is round, and the
face like that of a calf; a large ugly mouth,
little ears, and round full eyes; that he has
eat of them divers times, and it tastes not
unlike swine's flesh, and the entrails resemble
that of a hog, for which reason the natives
name it Ngullin-a-masa (the water-sow); but
the Portuguese call it Peixe Molker (the
woman-fish).  Although it feeds on herbs
which grow on the river side, yet it does not
go out of the water, but only holds its head
out when it feeds: they are taken for the
most part in the rainy times, when the waters
are disturbed and muddy, and they cannot
discern the approach of fishermen; they are
caught by striking."

The pretended letter of Alexander the
Great to his mother Olympias and his
preceptor Aristotle, found in the Latin version of
the Pseudo-Callisthenes, and from which
Vincent de Beauvais extracted so much in
the fourth book of his Speculum Historiale,
is a complete repertory of monsters.
According to this work, which was the delight of
the middle ages, they beset the path of the
Macedonian hero at every step of his progress
through India.  Alexander begins the list of
his prodigies with an account of a famous
crab:  "We continued our march until we
came to the sea-shore, where, having halted,
we saw a crab come out of the briny flood
and seize the dead body of a horse, which it
carried off.  Shortly afterwards, a host of
these marine monsters fell upon us, so that
we were not able to capture a single crab.
The flame of a fire which we lit delivered us
from them."   This, it must be confessed, was
not a very glorious passage-of-arms for the
conqueror of the world.  The royal Greek
continues:  "Quitting these places, we moved
on for several days, and encountered men
who had six feet and three eyes; a little
further on we met with dog-headed men, whom
we had some difficulty in putting to flight.
At last we reached an immense plain, in the
midst of which was a great gulf; I threw a
bridge across it, and all the army passed
over.  Thenceforward we were deprived of
the light of day, but, continuing the march,
we arrived at the land of darkness, where
The Happy dwell.  Here two birds with
human faces"  (How did he make them out?)
"approached me on the wing, saying, 'It is
not permitted to thee, O Alexander, to
venture further.'"  At this announcement the
king retraced his steps, and proceeded in a
different direction.  The conquest of Persia
followed, after which Alexander, taking a
number of guides, turned towards the north.

"On the ninth day we found ourselves in a
forest, called Anaphantus, full of a great
number of trees bearing fruit like apples.
There were also in this forest men of vast
stature, twenty-four cubits in height, with
thick necks and hands, and elbows like saws"
(a nudge from these giants would be
unpleasant).  "They advanced upon us.  I was
very much afflicted at seeing such beings, and
ordered that some of them should be seized.
We charged them with cries and trumpet-
blasts, and they fled from us.  I killed three
hundred and thirty-two of them" (a statement
one may be permitted to doubt),
"and lost a hundred and sixty of my own
soldiers."

The next foes whom the Greeks encountered
were the inhabitants of a country
smiling with verdure, of gigantic size, stout,
hairy, and red, with eyes like those of lions.
"There were others also, called Ochlotes,
without hair, four cubits high, and as broad
as the length of a lance; they wore aprons
for their only attire.  They were very strong,
and well disposed to annoy us, but fought
only with clubs, killing many of my men.