The Dutch were no less inclined to the marvellous, and they propagated the belief in the mermaid with earnestness and particularity. VALENTYN, one of their chaplains, in his account of the Natural History of Amboina, embodied in his great work on the Netherlands' Possessions in India, published so late as 1727[1], has 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. As to the dugong he admits its resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates the idea of its having given rise to the fable, by being mistaken for one. This error he imagines must have arisen at a time when observations on such matters were made with culpable laxity; but now more recent and minute attention has established the truth beyond cavil. [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.]