THE DAILY HERALD — NOVEMBER 07, 1896
A WHAT IS IT. ♢ English Fishermen Kill a Strange Freak of
Nature in the Pacific.
Seattle, Wash., Nov. 3.—A party of Englishmen who have been porpoise fishing in the Pacific discovered and killed a monster that resembles a merman. The party was off the island of Wamoff in the hunting boat, and Lord Devonshire one of the fishermen, had just shot a porpoise, when some one called “look there,” pointing to a frightful looking monster about a cable length away.
Hastily raising his weapon he fired and hit the creature between the eyes. The shot, though it did not kill it, so stunned it that it lay perfectly still on the surface of the sea. It showed fight when hauled into the boat and had to be killed to prevent it from swamping the craft.
The monster is said to be one of the strangest freaks ever put together. It measures ten feet from its nose to the end of its fluke shaped tail and the girth of its human shaped body was just six feet. It would weigh close to 500 pounds. From about the breast bone to about a point where the base of the stomach would be, were it human, it looked like a man. Its arms, quite human in shape and form, are very long and covered completely with long, coarse dark reddish hair, as is the whole body.
It had, or did have at one time, four fingers and a thumb on each hand, almost human in shape, except that in place of finger nails there were long slender claws. But in days
