n robe, without which she could never rejoin her
friends or reach her watery home. He endeavored to console her. She
implored him to restore her dress; but her beauty had decided that. At
last, as he continued inexorable, she consented to become his wife. They
were married and had several children, who retained no mark of the
watery strain, save a thin web between their fingers and a peculiar bend
of the hand.

The Shetlander's love for his wife was unbounded, but she made a cold
return. Often she stole out alone and hastened to the sea-shore, and at
a given signal a seal of large size would appear, and they would hold
converse for hours in an unknown language, when she would return home
pensive and melancholy.

So years passed and her hopes vanished, when one day the children,
playing behind a stack of corn, found a seal-skin. Delighted, they ran
to show the prize to their mother. She was no less delighted, for she
saw in it the lost home and friends beneath the water. Yet she loved her
children. That proved but a slight pang, and with many embraces she fled
to the sea.

The husband came in almost immediately, and hearing what had happened
ran out only to see her plunge into the sea, where she was joined by the
seal. She looked back and saw his misery, "Farewell!" she said. "I loved
you well while I was with you, but I always loved my first husband
better."

"Near the coast," says Sir James Forbes, "we saw many sorts of fish, but
did not meet with many of the Mermaids so often mentioned in these seas
especially by Mr. Matcham, a gentleman of great respectability, and at
that time superintendent of the Company's Marine at Bombay. I have heard
him declare, that, when in command of a trading vessel at Mozambique,
Mombaz, and Melinda, three of the principal seaports on the east coast
of Africa, he frequently saw these extraordinary animals from six to
twelve feet long; the head resembling the human, except about the nose
and mouth, which were rather more like a hog's snout; the skin fair and
smooth; the head covered with dark, glossy hair of considerable length;
the neck, breasts, and body of the female as low as the hips, appeared
like a well-formed woman; from thence to the extremity of the tail they
were perfect fish. The shoulders and arms were in good proportion, but
from the elbow tapered to a fin, like the turtle or penguin."

The very curious reader should examine Cuvier's account of the Manatee,
or Manatus,