Asionally saw them were not draughtsmen, but had to describe the monsters they had seen on their return to…
- Date of account
- Published 1890
- Source
- Curious Creatures in Zoology
- Reference
- Curious Creatures in Zoology · selected passage 1
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
asionally saw them were not draughtsmen, but had to describe the monsters they had seen on their return to land, their effigies came to be exceedingly marvellous, and unlike the originals
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyasionally saw them were not draughtsmen, but had to describe the monsters they had seen on their return to land, their effigies came to be exceedingly marvellous, and unlike the originals. The Northern Ocean, especially, was their abode, and, among the Northern nations, tales of Kraken, Sea-Serpents, Whirlpools, Mermen, &c., &c., lingered long after they were received with doubt by other nations; but perhaps the most credulous times were the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when no travellers’ tales seem too gross for belief, as can well be seen in the extreme popularity, throughout all Europe, of the “Voyages and Travels of Sir John Maundeville,” who, though he may be a myth, and his so-called writings a compilation, yet that compilation represented the sum of knowledge, both of Geography, and Natural History, of countries not European, that was attainable in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.