[Footnote 1:  FRAN.  VALENTYN, Beschryving van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c. 5 vol. fol.  Dordrecht and Amsterdam, MDCCXXVII. vol. iii. p. 330.]

For instance, he states that in 1653, when a lieutenant in the Dutch service was leading a party of soldiers along the sea-shore in Amboina, he and all his company saw the mermen swimming at a short distance from the beach with long and flowing hair, of a colour between gray and green—­and six weeks afterwards, the creatures were again seen by him and more than fifty witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight.[1]

[Footnote 1:  VALENTYN, Beschryving, &c., vol. iii. p. 331.]

“If any narrative in the world,” adds VALENTYN, “deserves credit, it is this; since not only one but two mermen together were seen by so many eye-witnesses.  Should the stubborn world, however, hesitate to believe it, it matters nothing; as there are people who would even deny that such cities as Rome, Constantinople or Cairo, exist, merely because they themselves have not happened to see them.”

But what are such incredulous persons, he continues, to make of the circumstance recorded by Albert Herport in his account of India[1], that a sea-man was seen in the water near the Church of Taquan, on the morning of the 29th of April 1661, and a mermaid at the same spot the same afternoon?—­or what do they say to the fact that in 1714, a mermaid was not only seen but captured near the island of Booro? “five feet Rhineland measure in height, which lived four days and seven hours, but refusing all food, died without leaving any intelligible account of herself.”

[Footnote 1:  Probably the Itinerarium Indicum of ALBRECHT HERPORT.  Berne, 1669.]

Valentyn, in support of his own faith in the mermaid, cites numerous other instances in which both “sea-men and women” were seen and taken at Amboina; especially one by an office-bearer in the Church of Holland[1], by whom it was surrendered to the Governor Vanderstel.

[Footnote 1:  A “krank-bezoeker” or visitant of the sick.]

Of this well-authenticated specimen he gives an elaborate engraving amongst those of the authentic fishes of the island—­together with a minute ichthyological description of each for the satisfaction of men of science.

[Illustration:  THE MERMAID (From VALENTYN)]

The fame of this creature having reached Europe, the British Minister in Holland wrote to Valentyn on the 28th December 1716, whilst the Emperor, Peter the Great of Russia, was his guest at Amsterdam; to communicate the desire of the Czar, that the mermaid should be brought home from Amboina for his Imperial inspection.

To complete his proofs of the existence of mermen and women, Valentyn points triumphantly to the historical fact, that in Holland in the year 1404, a mermaid was driven during a tempest, through a breach in the dyke of Edam, and was taken alive in the lake of Purmer.  Thence she was carried to Harlem, where the Dutch women taught her to spin; and where, several years after, she died in the Roman Catholic faith;—­“but this,” says the pious Calvinistic chaplain, “in no way militates against the truth of her story."[1]