THE BEAUFORT REPUBLICAN — JULY 03, 1873
Mermaids—Their Appearance at Sea.
In 1737, according to a Scottish magazine, the crew of a ship newly arrived in the Thames river from the East Indies, reported that in the island of Mauritius they had partaken of a mermaid, the flesh of which was a great deal like veal. The mermaid weighed three or four hundred weight—rather a buxom specimen ! The heal was particularly large, and so were the features, which differed but little from those of a man or woman. The story tells of two of them, one with a beard, four or five inches long, the other much more feminine. “When they are first taken,” the narrator proceeds to say, “which is often on the ground, they cry and grieve with great sensibility.”
About the same time a story cane from Vigo, in Spain; to the effect that some fishermen on that coast had caught a sort of a Merman, five feet and a half from head to foot. The head was like that of a goat, with a long beard and mustache, a black skin, somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, hands longer and larger than they ought to be in proportion, and long fingers, with nails like claws; webbed toes, and a fin at the lower part of the back.
The magazines for 1775 gave an account of a mermaid which was captured in the Levant and brought to London. One of the learned periodicals gravely told its readers that the mermaid had the complexion and features of a European, like these of a young woman ; that the eyes were
