by Charles Fort
It does not matter what scientific dictum may be brought against us. I will engage to find that it is only an approximation, or that it is a work-out only in imaginary conditions. The most rigorous science is frosted childishness. Every severe, or chaste, treatise upon mechanics is only a fairy story of frictionless and non-extensible characters that interact up to the “happy ending.” Nowadays, a scenario writer will sometimes tone down the absolute happiness of a conclusion, with just a suggestion that there is a little trouble in the offing: but the tellers of theorems represent about the quality of intellect in the most primitive times of Hollywood. For everything that is supposed to be so well-known that it is proverbial, there are exceptions. A mule is a symbol of sterility. For instances of fertility in mules, look over indexes of the Field. As to anything else that we’re taking as absolute truth—look it up.
One afternoon, in October, 1878, Mr. Davy, a naturalist, who was employed at the London Aquarium, took a stroll with a new animal. I think of a prayer that is said to have been uttered by King Louis XIV. He was tired of lamb chops and beef and bacon—“Oh, God! Send me a new animal.” Mr. Davy took a stroll with one. People far away were attracted by such screeches as are seldom heard in London. Some ex-slaves, who were playing in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were following the new animal, and were letting loose their excitability. The creature was about two feet long, and two feet high, and was formed like nothing known to anatomists—anyway to anatomists of this earth. It was covered with wiry hair: head like a boar’s, and curly tail like a boar’s. It was described as “a living cube.” As if with abdomen missing, its hind legs were close to its forelegs. If Mr. Davy’s intention had been to attract attention, he was succeeding. Almost anybody with the modern view of things will think what a pity he wasn’t advertising something. The crowd jammed around so that he ran into an Underground Railway Station. Here there was an uproar. He was compelled to ride in the brake, because of a fear that there would be a panic among the passengers. At the Aquarium, Davy told that an acquaintance of his, named Leman, had seen this creature with some peasants, in the South of France, and had bought it, but, unable to speak the patois of the district, had been unable to learn anything of its origin. At the Aquarium the only explanation that could be thought of was that it was a dog-boar hybrid.
Davy’s publicity continued. He took the new animal to his home, and a crowd went with him. His landlord looked at the animal. When the animal looked at the landlord, the landlord ran to his room, and from behind closed doors, ordered Davy to take away the monster. There was another hold-up of traffic all the way to the home of Frank Buckland.
In Land and Water, of which he was the Editor, issue of October 5, Buckland wrote an account of this “demon,” as he called it, saying that it looked like a gargoyle, or like one of Fuseli’s satanic animals. He did not try to explain, but mentioned what was thought at the Aquarium. In the next issue of Land and Water, Thomas Worthington, the naturalist, wrote that the idea of the hybrid was “utterly untenable”: but his own idea that the creature was “a tame hyena of some abnormal kind” leaves mysterious how the “demon” ever got into the possession of peasants in the South of France. It would be strange if they had a tame hyena of a normal kind.
In January, 1846 (Tasmanian Journal of Science, 3-147), a skull was found on a bank of the river Murrumbridgee, Australia. It was examined by Dr. James Grant, who said that the general form and arrangement of the teeth were different from those of any animal known to him. He noted somebody’s suggestion that it might be the skull of one of the camels that had been sent to Australia in the year 1839. He accounted for its having characters that were unknown to him, by thinking that it might be fatal. So then, whether in accordance with a theory or not, he found that some of the bones were imperfectly ossified, and that the teeth were covered with a membrane. It was not a fossil. It was a skull of a large, herbivorous animal, and had not been exposed long.
Melbourne Argus, Feb. 28, and March 1, 1890—a wandering monster. A list of names and addresses of persons who said that they had seen it, was published. It was a creature about thirty feet long, and was terrorizing the people of Euroa. “The existence of some altogether unheard-of monster is vouched for by a cloud of credible witnesses.”
I am tired of the sensible explanations that are holding back new delusions. So I suggest that this thing, thirty feet long, was not a creature, but was a construction, in which explorers from somewhere else, were traveling back and forth, near one of this earth’s cities, having their own reasons for not wanting to investigate too closely.
I don’t know what will be thought of zoologists of Melbourne, but whatever will be thought of me can’t be altogether focused upon me, because there were scientists in Melbourne who were as enlightened as I am, or as preposterous and sensational as I am. Officials of the Melbourne Zoological Gardens thought that, whether this story was nonsense or not, it should be looked into. They got a big net, and sent a man with the net to Euroa. Forty men, with the man with the net, set out. They hunted all day, but no huge bulk, more or less in the distance, was seen, and a statement that enormous tracks were found may be only a sop to us enlightened, or preposterous, ones.
But the man with the net is a significant character. He had not the remotest of ideas of using it, but, just the same, he went along with it. There are other evidences of occasional open-mindedness among biologists, and touches of indifference, now and then, to whatever may be the fascinations of smugness. Why biologists should be somewhat less dogmatic than astronomers, or why association with the other animals should be rather more liberalizing than is communion with the stars is not mysterious. One can look at a rhinoceros and at the same time be able to think. But the stupefying, little stars shine with a hypnotic effect, like other glittering points. The little things are taken too seriously. They twinkle humorously enough, themselves.
A reported monster is told of, in the Scientific American, July, 1922. Dr. Clement Onelli, Director of the Zoological Gardens, of Buenos Aires, had published a letter that had been sent to him by an American prospector named Sheffield, who said that, in the Argentine Territory of Chebut, he had seen huge tracks, which he had followed to a lake. “There I saw in the middle of the lake an animal with a huge neck, like that of a swan, and the movement of the water made me suppose the beast to have a body like that of a crocodile.” I wrote to Dr. Onelli, and received a reply, dated Aug. 15, 1924, telling that again he had heard of the monster. Maybe this same huge-necked creature was seen somewhere else, however we explain its getting there. The trouble in trying to understand all reported monsters is their mysterious appearances and disappearances. In the London Daily Mail, Feb. 8, 1921, a huge, unknown animal, near the Orange River, South Africa, is told of by Mr. F.C. Cornell, F.R.G.S. It was something with a neck like a bending tree trunk, “something huge, black, and sinuous.” It devoured cattle. “The object may have been a python, but if it was it was of incredible size.” It is only preposterously unreasonable to think that the same thing could have appeared in South Africa and then in South America.
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 reconciliation
s.
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 p
lasterfully. 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.