To turn from the record of an ancient traveller to that of a modern one, Dr. Clarke, whom I have already quoted, gives the following description: “At four o’clock in the morning we were called upon deck by the captain to see the Isle of Serpents, anciently Leuce, lying off the mouths of the Danube, celebrated in history for the tomb and temple of Achilles. It is so small that, as we passed, we could view its whole extent. Judging by the eye, it appeared to be near a mile in length and less than half a mile in breadth. It is quite bare, being only covered with a little grass and very low herbage. When carefully examined through a telescope, there did not seem to be the smallest remains of antiquity. I made a sketch of it from the south-east. On the south side appear cliffs about fifty feet high. “Many absurd stories of Turkish and Russian mariners are founded upon a notion that the island is covered with serpents. An opportunity rarely occurs whereon ships can lie to in order to visit it; and, if this were to happen, not a man of any of their crews would venture on shore, although there are twenty fathoms of water within a cable’s length of the island, and any vessel may sail close to it. The Russians relate that four persons belonging to the crew of a ship wrecked there no sooner landed than they encountered a worse enemy than the sea, and were all devoured by serpents. Ammianus Marcellinus records a similar superstition as prevailing in his time concerning the dangers of the place.” Here we have an indication of the reason for the island’s name; and though the legends of sailors being devoured by them are of course mere legends, the existence of the serpents seems beyond question. Captain Spratt, in his Admiralty survey of the mouths of the Danube, says “the modern name of Fido-nisi or Serpent Island, has no doubt arisen from the abundance of these reptiles upon the island; and they are still very numerous, being veritable sea-serpents, or water-snakes, living upon the fish in the sea, and inhabiting the cliffs on the coast. More than twenty of them were seen coiled together under a shelving rock that received the rays of a warm October sun; and many having fallen into the wells and cisterns died there: the water in them is not now drinkable, so that water for the Turkish troops is obliged to be brought from the Danube. The serpents are jet black, except along the belly. They have a small head, and are from four to five feet long, and, although said to be harmless, are a very disagreeable-looking species.” A traveller on the lower Danube has recorded the number of fresh-water snakes seen swimming along with their heads erect above the surface, and it may be that the reptiles of Serpent Island were (perhaps are, though I have found no recent reference to them) a colony of such that found the water about their island still sufficiently fresh. The true sea snakes are described by writers on natural history as only found in Asiatic seas.