displeasure and correction, she
descended more rapidly and safely than her awkwardness seemed to
promise.

"She was fed from the first on fresh fish alone, and grew and fattened
considerably. We had her carried down daily in a hand-barrow to the
sea-side, where an old excavation admitting the salt water was
abundantly roomy and deep for her recreation and our observation. After
sporting and diving for some time she would come ashore, and seemed
perfectly to understand the use of the barrow. Often she tried to waddle
from the house to the water, or from the latter to her apartment, but
finding this fatiguing, and seeing preparations by her chairman, she
would of her own accord mount her palanquin, and thus be carried as
composedly as any Hindoo princess. By degrees we ventured to let her go
fairly into the sea, and she regularly returned after a short interval;
but one day during a thick fall of snow she was imprudently let off as
usual, and, being decoyed some distance out of sight of the shore by
some wild ones which happened to be in the bay at the time, she either
could not find her way back or voluntarily decamped.

"She was, we understood, killed very shortly after in a neighbouring
inlet. We had kept her about six months, and every moment she was
becoming more familiar; we had dubbed her Finna, and she seemed to know
her name. Every one that saw her was struck with her appearance.

"The smooth face without external ears--the nose slightly aquiline--the
large, dark, and beautiful eye which stood the sternest human gaze, gave
to the expression of her countenance such dignity and variety that we
all agreed that it really was _super_-animal. The Scandinavian Scald,
with such a mermaid before him, would find in her eye a metaphor so
emphatic that he would have no reason to borrow the favourite oriental
image of the gazelles from his Caucasian ancestors.

"This remarkable expressiveness and dignity of aspect of the
_Haff-fish_, so superior to all other animals with which the fishermen
of Shetland were acquainted, and the human character of his voice, may
have procured for him that peculiar respect with which he was regarded
by those who lived nearest his domains, and were admitted to most
frequent intercourse with him. He was the favourite animal of
superstition, and a few tales of him are still current. These, however,
are not of much interest or variety, the leading ideas in them being
these: That the great seal i