It was in 1750 that Pontoppidan, a Danish writer, and for the last seventeen years of his life Bishop of Bergen, in Norway, first gave to the world his account of the kraken and sea-serpent, and it must be admitted that what he says of both of them—but especially of the former—is sufficient to justify many a head-shake, on the part of grave people. The kraken, according to the bishop, has a back which, when it rises from the sea-bottom, provides anyone who may be in the neighbourhood, with a comfortable island of about a mile and a half in circumference. For an island, accordingly, it is often, and very naturally, mistaken. It may be landed upon and walked over with ease and comfort, but has the disadvantage of sinking slowly and leaving one in the water, if anything of a disagreeable nature, such as the lighting of a fire or the digging of a hole, is instituted upon it. Upon provocation, moreover, or when the creature is hungry, a forest of vast, snake-like trees, being its enormous tentacles, rise from and wave over the supposed island, seizing and overwhelming any vessel that may be within their reach. As it sinks, too, a violent whirlpool is caused, owing to the displacement of the water consequent on the disappearance of so huge a body—in which whirlpool ships are sucked down. The waters, for miles about it, are discoloured with a turbid fluid—the well-known inky discharge of the cuttlefish—and shoals of fishes, that have been attracted by the monster’s musky smell, and have lost their way in the darkness, are received into its vasty maw.