I confess that I do not attach much weight to this last example, from the suspicious resemblance which the illustration given in the _Sketcher_ bears to an alligator, suggesting that possibly such a creature may have been blown by winds or carried by currents to the position where it was seen. It is true that Mr. Gosse quotes the size of the largest alligator on record as only seventeen feet and a half, whereas the estimated length of the supposed sea-serpent in this instance was from forty to sixty. But against that may be argued the difficulty of estimating lengths or heights when you have but a short inspection, and no object immediately near with which to institute a comparison[264]; while I am by no means certain that Mr. Gosse's maximum is correct. Dr. Dennys, of Singapore, has assured me that some years back an alligator, approaching thirty feet in length, haunted for some days the small tidal creek which runs through, and for some miles above, that town; while I very well remember Mr. Gregory, the Surveyor-General of Queensland, informing me that in the rivers in the north of that colony there were alligators equalling in length a whale-boat, say twenty-eight feet. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--SEA-SERPENT SEEN FROM THE S.S. "CITY OF BALTIMORE," IN THE GULF OF ADEN, JAN. 28, 1879. (_From the "Graphic" of April 19, 1879._)] The _Graphic_ of April 19th, 1879, contains a drawing of "a marine monster seen from S.S. _City of Baltimore_, in the Gulf of Aden, January 28th." The descriptive letter-press is as follows:--