Library of Cryptozoology

The monster taken at Fortune Bay was still unidentified two days after it was killed in a 48-hour battle against fishermen's guns and harpoons, and was lying lashed to Capt. Earl Noble's motor vessel Golda awaiting an offer of purchase. If no museum or institution buys the huge carcass, its nine-inch deep coat of fat will be fried into oil. The exact length of the creature is 34 feet. It is finless, but has several pairs of four-foot long flippers. Its tail is nine feet in extreme width; while the mouth, three feet, eight inches across, extends nine feet from the tip of the snouth. The immense fish differs greatly from any whales frequenting Newfoundland waters, and does not fit descriptions of any known fish.

We [the ship Emma] had been a week out from Santo Domingo, and were out about twenty miles northeast from Cedros Island, when early one morning we saw a commotion in the sea about a mile off. It was a very quiet morning, and we crept up very close. We saw a strange sight. A whale about 30 feet long had been found or killed by the monster that was feeding upon it. At intervals the serpent would roar up out of the sea so that we could coolly survey his entire form. His body was round and about three times as long as the whale, or 100 feet long. Its head was as near like a turtle as anything else, with the mouth set well back under the jaw. We did not see the eyes, so I can not say if they are the traditional flaming eyeballs or not. On each side of the body were five or six legs, each webbed and horned like the wings of a dragon. While feeding on the whale it made a peculiar, horrible wheezing or hissing sound, but when it saw us it stopped and drew slowly away, looking back over its sho...

Now in the course of examining and investigating these subjects and what bears upon them, to the utmost limit, with all the zeal that I could command, I have ascertained that the ''scolopendra'' is a sea-monster, and of sea-monsters it is the biggest, and if cast up on the shore no one would have the courage to look at it. And those who are expert in marine matters say that they have seen them floating and that they extend the whole of their head above the sea, exposing hairs of immense length protruding from their nostrils, and that the tail is flat and resembles that of a crayfish. And at times the rest of their body is to be seen floating on the surface, and its bulk is comparable to a full-sized trireme. And they swim with numerous feet in line on either side as though they were rowing themselves (though the expression is somewhat harsh) with tholepins hung alongside.

Chenla [Cambodia] produces a fish named fu-hu , which resembles the mud-eel, but with a bill shaped like the parrot's, and eight legs.

The mukade-kujira [ ムカデ-クジラ, centipede-whale] is as large as a whale, and has a mane, five fins on the back, and a two-cleft tail. Its legs number twelve, six being on each side; its flesh is coloured red and very poisonous, man being killed when he eats it. Note : Modified from a translation by Minakata Kumagusu, "The Centipede-Whale," Nature , Vol. 56, No. 1454 (9 September 1897)