AROUND LOCH NESS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 97, 22 October 1934, Page 7

AROUND LOCH NESS

THE CORDON WATCHES

OVER TWENTY WITNESSES

NEWS OF THE MONSTER

News has been received that the watch on Loch Ness which lias been organised by Sir Edward. Mountain, chairman of a well-known insurance company, will continue for some time, j says a spocial correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." In the month of July twenty unemployed men from Inverness were posted at points round tho loch, each armed with a pair of binoculars and a box camera. This observation corps was disbanded in the second week of August, since when two men have remained in camp by the side of the loch at Castle Urquhart, which overlooks tho bay at Drumnadrochit and commands a wide stretch of water both to north and to south. They are equipped with powerful binoculars and cine-cameras, to which telephoto lenses have been fitted. The expedition has not succeeded in securing any evidence likely to lead to the identification of the Loch Ness "monster"; on the other hand, it has certainly accumulated a further mass of well-attested observation to tho effect that there is living in the loch a creature of size and habits which warrant one in regarding is as foreign or abnormal in relation to its present s«- ---| roundhigs. ONE WHO SAW IT. .From his watchers Sir Edward .Moantain has received over twenty signed statements describing appearances of tho "monster," as it is convenient to call the creature. Ono of them is Mr. W. McL. Campbell, who lives in tho Eastgate, Inverness. Mr. Campbell has served as a signaller with tho Cameron Highlanders, and could probably on that account lay claim to a keen eye. He had seen tho "monster" four ' times, and had twice secured photo- ! graphs, one of which he withdrew from his breast pocket to sliow me. It revealed a black object standing out of the water, consisting so far as one could sec of one longish hump which might be tho "neck" and two steeper humps as "back." Mr. Campbell told me that to his eye tho "back" seemed to consist of one hump and not two. It is possible, however, that while he was finding the direction with hia camera the animal changed its position.

His best view was once at a range of thirty yards, when he was scrambling from the shore of the loch to tho top of rocks where he had left his camera. Ho was therefore unable to take a picture. He described, however, tho appearanco of the neck and of the' large arched back.

TWO FLIPPERS,

The head seemed to be spade-shaped, and was just under water, while the hido was tough and dark. Tho parts visible stretched over a distance of between twenty-five and thirty feet. He also caught sight of two short fore flippors. Two other watchers saw the creature from other points on the lochsido at tho same time.

After talking to Mr. Campbell I left Inverness for Castle Uvquhart, the ruined twelfth-century fortress on a headland on tho south of Drumnadrochit Bay, where the two remaining watchers, Captain J. Fraser (who directed the first search party of twenty) and Mr. J. Mclntosh, arc stationed.

Captain Fraser began by explaining to me some of the difficulties of keeping watch on tho loch. Although yesterday was a fine, sunny day, on which the loch presented a scarcely broken surface of blue, many of the days since the watch was instituted have been far from favourable. The atmosphere may bocomo thick, the wind, caught in the narrow channel of the hills or eddying in the bays, plays curious tricks, the loch becomes as choppy as an arm of the sea. driftwood bobs up and down, and ducks fly over the face of the water in close V formation, brushing tho tips of the waves with their swiftlybeating wings. Often, I was told, tourists whose naked eyo had been deceived rushed up to a watcher and pointed out as the "monster" some object which with the aid of glasses could be easily identified as a plank or a barrel. Captain Fraser was convinced that fully half of the rocent accounts of sightings could be doubted, particularly when they came, as they often did, from tourists who had visited the loch for the express purpose of "seeing the monster." A TAR DRUM. One day a man and his "wife from the Manchester district came and photographed a bobbing tar drum and wore loath to accept the loan of field glasses in order that they might bo convinced of their error. I have learned from other sources that two pictures which have been passed off in the Press as "the monster" were known to be false by people dwelling near tho loch, although they wore no doubt accepted —and paid for —in good faith by tho newspapers in question. The loch is over twenty miles long and in breadth more than a mile on the average. Its average depth, according to my informant, is between 400 and 500 feet, while at points it ia nearer 800 feet than 700. At one place it is said to be 300 feet within a few yards of the shore. This can easily be imagined by anyone who stands on the road on the western shore and assumes that the rocks continue to be as precipitous below water as they are above it.

The watchers well understood the tricks which the eye could piny on such an expanse of water, and this ought to increase tho respect with which one treats their testimonies. Yot all their reports of "a largo dark object" of varying size,, of humps and necks and flippers, seem to bring one no nearer a solution of tho puzzle than did the already largo mass of evidence, selections of which were published after interviews with tho witnesses in person early this year. Every statement tends rather to deepen the mystery, for nothing is more bewildering than tho curious mixt.uro of confirmation anddivergence. Once the animal bobbed up suddenly and disappeared. One watcher got a photograph, but only of tho "wash" as it sank. The picture therefore seems to portray tho wake of a fairly largo vessel though no vessel was there. The commotion of the water on one occasion was described thus: "As if a boulder of at least half a ton had been dropped into tin; water."

There is general amusement around the loch when gentlemen of scientific leanings pronounce calmly to a witness that it is impossible to havo seen tho things they describe.