Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/12

 but in such grave and practical nations as England, America, and Germany, people were very much exercised in their minds.

In the large towns this monster became quite the rage; they sung about it in the cafés, they derided it in the newspapers, and joked upon it in the theatres. The canards had now every opportunity to lay eggs of every colour. One might have noticed in the papers drawings and descriptions of all the terrible and imaginary beings, from the white whale—the fearful Moby Dick of the Arctic regions—to the immense Kraken, whose tentacles were sufficient to grasp a ship of 500 tons and drag it to the depths of the ocean. They reproduced even the statements of ancient writers, the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny, who admitted the existence of these monsters; the Norwegian narratives of the Bishop Pontopidan, the tales of Paul Heggede, and, finally, the reports of Mr. Harrington, whose good faith no one could impugn, when he declared he had seen, when on board the Castillan in 1857, that enormous serpent, which up to that time had only infested the waters of the ancient Constitutional.

Then there arose the interminable discussions between the credulous and the incredulous amongst scientific societies and publications. This “monster question” inflamed their minds. Journalists who professed themselves scientific in contradistinction to those who professed to be intellectual, “slung ink” to a great extent during this memorable campaign; some even shed a few drops of blood, for the sea-serpent gave rise to some very offensive personalities.

For six months this paper-war continued with varying