Sir J. Emerson Tennent, in his 'Natural History of Ceylon,' quoting from the _Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus_, mentions that the annalist of the exploits of the Jesuits in India gravely records that seven of these monsters, male and female, were captured at Manaar, in 1560, and carried to Goa, where they were dissected by Demas Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy, "and their internal structure found to be in all respects conformable to the human." He also quotes Valentyn, one of the Dutch colonial chaplains, who, in his account of the Natural History of Amboyna,[46] embodied in his great work on the Netherlands' possessions in India, published in 1727,[47] devoted the first section of his chapter on the fishes of that island to a minute description of the "Zee-Menschen," "Zee-Wyven," and mermaids, the existence of which he warmly insists on as being beyond cavil. He relates that in 1663, when a lieutenant in the Dutch service was leading a party of soldiers along the sea-shore in Amboyna, he and all his company saw the mermen swimming at a short distance from the beach. They had long and flowing hair of a colour between grey and green. Six weeks afterwards the creatures were again seen by him and more than fifty witnesses, at the same place, by clear daylight. "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 Albrecht Herport[48] in his account of India, that a merman 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?" Valentyn, in support of his own faith in the mermaid, cites many other instances in which both "sea-men and sea-women" were seen and taken at Amboyna; especially one by a district visitor of the church, who presented it to the Governor Vanderstel. Of this "well-authenticated" specimen he gives an elaborate portrait amongst the fishes of the island,[49] with a minute description of each for the satisfaction of men of science. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--MERMAID AND FISHES OF AMBOYNA. _After Valentyn._] [46] One of the Dutch spice-islands in the Banda Sea, between Celebes and Papua. [47] _Beschrijving van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, etc., 5 vols. folio, Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1727, vol. iii. p. 330.