h
particularise, from their resemblance to the hair of a woman: "[Greek:
kai gynaikon opsin echousin aisper anti plokamon akanthai
prosertentai"][2]

[Footnote 1: MEGASTHENES, _Indica_, fragm. lix. 34,]

[Footnote 2: AELIAN, _Nat. Hist._, lib. xvi. ch. xviii.]

The Portuguese cherished the belief in the mermaid, and the annalist of
the exploits of the Jesuits in India, gravely records that seven of
these monsters, male and female, were captured at Manaar in 1560, and
carried to Goa, where they were dissected by Demas Bosquez, physician to
the Viceroy, and "their internal structure found to be in all respects
conformable to the human."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Hist, de la Compagnie de Jesus_, quoted in the _Asiat.
Journ._ vol. xiv. p. 461; and in FORBES' _Orient. Memoirs_, vol. i. p.
421.]

The Dutch were no less inclined to the marvellous, and they propagated
the belief in the mermaid with earnestness and particularity. VALENTYN,
one of their chaplains, in his account of the Natural History of
Amboina, embodied in his great work on the Netherlands' Possessions in
India, published so late as 1727[1], has devoted the first section of
his chapter on the Fishes of that island to a minute description of the
"Zee-Menschen, Zee-Wyven," and mermaids. As to the dugong he admits its
resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates the idea of its having given
rise to the fable, by being mistaken for one. This error he imagines
must have arisen at a time when observations on such matters were made
with culpable laxity; but now more recent and minute attention has
established the truth beyond cavil.

[Footnote 1: FRAN. VALENTYN, _Beschryving van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_,
&c. 5 vol. fol. Dordrecht and Amsterdam, MDCCXXVII. vol. iii. p. 330.]

For instance, he states that in 1653, when a lieutenant in the Dutch
service was leading a party of soldiers along the sea-shore in Amboina,
he and all his company saw the mermen swimming at a short distance from
the beach with long and flowing hair, of a colour between gray and
green--and six weeks afterwards, the creatures were again seen by him
and more than fifty witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight.[1]

[Footnote 1: VALENTYN, _Beschryving, &c._, vol. iii. p. 331.]

"If any narrative in the world," adds VALENTYN, "deserves credit, it is
this; since _not only one but two mermen_ together were seen by so many
eye-witnesses. Should the stubborn world, however, hesitate to believe
it,