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"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."
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 , 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.
I have planted a quantity of mulberry trees, which grow well there, and they ought to be planted in other directions." VALENTYN, chap. xiii.
We came then to the end of the island, which was alluvial ground, and crossed over the Spyt den Duyvel in a canoe, and paid nine stivers fare for us three, which was very dear. We followed the opposite side of the land, and came to the house of one Valentyn, a great acquaintance of our Gerrit.
Valentyn, by an obvious corruption, names him Sulthan Alciden Ryetza, and this coincidence is strongly in favour of the authenticity and correctness of the Annals.
The Dutch commander Joris van Spilbergen took leave of him in April 1603, and his ambassador to Holland, who returned in December, 1604, found his son on the throne, according to Valentyn.
Valentyn, who wrote an account of it about the year 1726, says, that in his time there were, within the walls, 1242 Dutch houses, and 1200 Chinese; and without the walls, 1066 Dutch, and 1240 Chinese, besides 12 arrack houses, making in all 4760: But this account appeared to us to be greatly exaggerated, especially with respect to the number of houses within the walls.
To complete his proofs of the existence of mermen and women, Valentyn points triumphantly to the historical fact, that in Holland in the year 1404, a mermaid was driven during a tempest, through a breach in the dyke of Edam, and was taken alive in the lake of Purmer.
We followed the opposite side of the land and came to the house of one Valentyn. He had gone to the city; but his wife was so much rejoiced to see Hollanders that she hardly knew what to do for us. She set before us what she had. We left after breakfasting there. Her son showed us the way, and we came to a road entirely covered with peaches.
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 , by whom it was surrendered to the Governor Vanderstel.
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