THE LITTLE FALLS WEEKLY TRANSCRIPT — NOVEMBER 09, 1894
HE SAW A MERMAID. ♢ An Early Morning Vision In a Tropic Sea.
Mr. Frederick Carruthers of Brooklyn swears by the talons of the fishhawk and the song of the sea raven that has seen a real live mermaid. Although many of Mr. Carruthers’ friends are skeptical on the subject, the Brooklyn Eagle places implicit faith in his story, which runs as follows:
“Many years ago, when I was an able seaman before the mast, I was aboard a bark lying as anchor in harbor at Demerara [historical region of Guyana, South America]. One morning just as daylight was breaking I was standing forward giving myself a bath. I was drawing water up in a bucket and dousing myself when I saw, a mermaid lying on a rock about 80 feet from me. The face was quite round; a perfect human face of small size, and the hair hung far down the back (the narrator indicated hair about as long as that worn by Buffalo Bill). The color of the face was, a little darker than the color of my hand (brown). The neck was human, and the shoulders of a woman; but the body rapidly became fish, with big fins and a regular fish tail. I called to Charley, the ship boy, but the thing was probably alarmed at the sound of my voice, and it disappeared. To Charley, then, I told the story just as I tell it now. He didn’t see the mermaid.”
Little Falls Weekly Transcript. (Little Falls, Morrison Co., Minn.), 09 Nov. 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
