acquaintance, and becoming more and more interested in the special
object of their visit.

As they approach the village, it is evident that something unusual is
going on; they pass people moving in the same direction, with eager and
expectant faces, to one of whom Mr. Webster ventures these questions:
Can his serpentine majesty be seen to-day? and where to the best
advantage? Receiving satisfactory replies, the coachman is ordered to
drive to the old wind-mill, where they arrive in a few moments,--from
the shady side of this quaint structure, whose merrily revolving sails
were at their usual work, a large part of both the outer and inner
harbors being easily seen.

Let us now take some note of occurrences which at this time were
agitating the little town, and the fame of which had extended to Boston.

On Sunday, the tenth of August, four days before, Mr. Amos Story, rowing
in his boat near Ten-Pound Island, was greatly disturbed, not to say
alarmed, by the appearance, at some twenty rods' distance, of a sea
monster, totally unlike anything he had ever seen in his long experience
as a fisherman and mariner. Moving at the rate of a mile in two minutes,
nearly one hundred feet in length, as large as the body of a man, with a
head like a turtle, but carried high out of the water, with the body of
a snake, but with the vertical motion of a caterpillar, and of a
dark-brown color, this enormous reptile brought such fear to the honest
fisherman as induced him to make a rapid retreat to a safe distance.

His account of the monster naturally set all the people on the lookout,
and for nearly every day in the following two weeks it was seen under
different circumstances by many of the inhabitants of Gloucester and the
adjacent villages.

At the present day, on the first notice of such a wonderful appearance,
the daily papers would send their reporters from far and near, and, with
the help of the Associated Press, curious readers all over the country
would the next morning have accounts of the Sea Serpent served to them
at breakfast-time. Instantaneous photographs would be attempted, and the
illustrated weeklies would give the world picturesque, if not accurate,
representations of the monster and the localities in which he appeared.
But in 1817 the news spread slowly, and no public mention was made of
the matter till Saturday the 16th, when the _Commercial Gazette_ of
Boston, under the modest caption of "Something New," alludes