The animal, or whatever it may be called, appeared careless of our proximity, and went our course for about six minutes on our starboard side, and then finally worked round to our port side, and remained in view, to the delight of all on board, for about half an hour. His length was reckoned to be over two hundred feet. JOHN W. WEBSTER, Commander, S.S. _Nestor_. Singapore, 18th September 1876. Mr. Cameron, proprietor of the journal, subsequently informed me that he had specially warned Captain Webster of the certain doubt that would be cast upon his statement, but he still insisted on its publication. It was confirmed by Mr. H. R. Beaver, a merchant of Singapore, and other persons who were passengers by the boat. The same newspaper (_Straits Times Overland Journal_), on November 2, 1876, had the following extract from the _China Mail_:-- "It is more than probable that Captain Webster, of the steamer _Nestor_, will be 'interviewed' very extensively when he reaches a berth in London Docks. A genuine sea-serpent is not met with every day, and as the observations made by the officers of the ship have, we understand, been set down in some formal way before Consul Medhurst at Shanghai, to be forwarded to the _Field_, the naturalists will be in a position to pursue their researches when the captain arrives. Competent authorities are now of opinion that the part of the monster formerly supposed to have been its head, must have been a hump; and that its head's being under water would account for the supreme contempt with which it treated the passage of the steamer. The undulating motion of the huge animal would explain the statement that this knob or hump rose occasionally about six feet out of the water. The alternate yellow and black stripes which covered all that could be seen of the body, appear to have conveyed the impression that the tail was like that of a dragon covered with scales, although that conclusion need not necessarily be looked upon as certain. If the head of this unknown 'shape' was actually under water, then the length becomes proportionately greater. It was over two hundred feet long before, it must now be regarded as measuring, say, two hundred and fifty feet, which, with forty-five or fifty feet beam, gives a leviathan of something like the dimensions of an old-fashioned frigate." A correspondent of the _Celestial Empire_, of Shanghai, wrote thus to the journal:-- SIR,--If it is true that one of those who observed the marine monster from the _Nestor_ is still here, it is very desirable that he should give some fuller account of what he saw. Only a sciolist will deny the possibility of such a beast, and Professor Owen himself has remarked that the only absolutely incredible part of the accounts of those who have seen it, is the statement of its vertical sinuosity, which is impossible to any of the serpent tribe.