or **Mermaid**, a sea-creature frequently talked of, supposed half human and half a fish.

However naturalists may doubt of the reality of mermen or mermaids, we have testimony enough to establish it; though, how far these testimonies may be authentic, we cannot take upon us to say. In the year 1187, as Lary informs us, such a monster was fished up in the county of Suffolk, and kept by the governor for six months. It bore so near a conformity with man, that nothing seemed wanting to it but speech. One day it took the opportunity of making its escape; and plunging into the sea, was never more heard of. Hist.de Angleterre, P. I. p. 403.

In the year 1430, after a huge tempest, which broke down the dikes in Holland, and made way for the sea into the meadows, &c., some girls of the town of Edam in West Friesland, going in a boat to milk their cows, perceived a mermaid embarrassed in the mud, with a very little water. They took it into their boat, and brought it with them to Edam, dressed it in woman's apparel, and taught it to spin. It fed like one of them, but could never be brought to offer at speech. Some time afterwards it was brought to Haerlem, where it lived for some years, though still showing an inclination to the water. Parival relates, that they had given it some notion of a Deity, and that it made its reverences very devoutly whenever it passed by a crucifix. Delices de Hollande.

In the year 1560, near the island of Manaar, on the western coast of the island of Ceylon, some fishermen brought up, at one draught of a net, seven mermen and mermaids; of which several Jesuits, and among the rest F. Hen. Henriques and Dimas Bosquez, physicians to the viceroy of Goa, were witnesses. The physician, who examined them with a great deal of care, and made dissection thereof, asserts, that all the parts both internal and external were found perfectly conformable to those of men. See the Hist. de la compagnie de Jesus, P. II. T. iv. No 276, where the relation is given at length.

We have another account of a merman, seen near the great rock called Diamond, on the coast of Martinico. The persons who saw it, gave in a precise description of it before a notary. They affirmed that they saw it wipe its hand over its face, and even heard it blow its nose.

Another creature of the same species was caught in the Baltic in the year 1531, and sent as a present to Sigismund king of Poland, with whom it lived three days, and was seen by all the court. Another very young one was taken near Rocca de Sintra, as related by Damian Goes. The king of Portugal and the grand master of the order of St James, are said to have had a suit at law to determine which party these monsters belong to.

In Pontopidan's Natural History of Norway, also, we have accounts of mermaids; but not more remarkable or any way better attested than the above, to which we have given a place, merely to shew how far the folly and extravagance of credulity have been carried by weak minds. Merns, Mearns, or Kincardineshire, a county of Scotland. See Kincardineshire.

Merodach was an ancient king of Babylon, who was placed among the gods, and worshipped by the Babylonians. Jeremiah (chap. I. 2.), speaking of the ruin of Babylon, says, "Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces." We find certain kings of Babylon, in whose names that of Merodach is contained: for example, Evil-merodach and Merodach-baladan. Evil-merodach was the son of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and had for his successor the wicked Belshazzar. Merodach-baladan, son of Baladan king of Babylon, having heard that Hezekiah had been cured miraculously (Isa. xxxix.), and that the sun had gone backwards to give him an assurance of his recovery, sent him presents, and made him compliments upon the recovery of his health. Ptolemy calls him Mardoc-empadus; and says, that he began to reign at Babylon 26 years after the beginning of the era of Nabonassar, that is, in the year of the world 2283.

Meroë, in Ancient Geography, an island of Ethiopia beyond Egypt, in the Nile; with a cognominal town, the metropolis of the Ethiopians.

The Jesuits have endeavoured to prove, that the province of Gojam in Abyssinia is the Meroë of the ancients; but this is strongly contested by Mr Bruce, who is of opinion, that it must be looked for somewhere between the source of the Nile and its union with the Atbara. The latter, he thinks, is very plainly the Astaboras of the ancients; and Pliny says, that this stream encloses the left side of Mercé as the Nile does the right, in which case we must suppose him looking southward from Alexandria, otherwise the words would not apply.

We are told by Diodorus Siculus, that Meroë had its name from a sister of Cambyses king of Persia, who died there in the expedition undertaken by that prince against the Ethiopians. His army perished with hunger and thirst in the deserts beyond Meroë, which could not have happened if they had reached Gojam, the latter being one of the most plentiful countries in the world. A further proof that Gojam cannot be the ancient Meroë is, that the latter was enclosed between the rivers Nile and Astaboras, while Gojam is almost entirely surrounded by the Nile. If the ancients were acquainted with Gojam, they must also have been acquainted with the fountains of the Nile, which we certainly know they were not. Pliny says that Meroë, the most considerable of all the islands of the Nile, was called Astaboras, from the name of its left channel, which cannot be supposed any other than the junction of the Nile and Atbara. He informs us moreover, that the sun was vertical twice in the year, viz. when proceeding northward he entered the 18th degree of Taurus, and when returning he came to the 14th degree of Leo; but this could never be the case with Gojam, which lies in about 10 degrees north latitude.

Again, the poet Lucan describes Meroë by two circumstances which cannot apply to any other than the peninsula of Atbara. One is, that the inhabitants were black; which was the case with the Gymnosophists and first inhabitants, and which has been the case with all the rest down to the Saracen conquest: but the inhabitants of Gojam, as well as the other Abyssinians, are fair, at least greatly different in complexion from the blacks; they are also long-haired, and nobody imagined that they ever had philosophers or science among them, which was eminently the case with the ancient inhabitants of Meroë. The other circumstance is, that the ebony tree grew in the island of Meroë, which at this day grows plentifully in the peninsula of Atbara, and part of the province of Kuara, but not in Gojam, where the tree could not subsist on account of the violent rains which take place during six months in the year. Mr Bruce mentions another circumstance quoted from the poet Lucan, which likewise tends to prove the identity of Meroë and Atbara, viz. that though there are many trees in it, they afford no shade. This our traveller found by experience, when returning from Abyssinia through Atbara. "The country (says he) is flat, and has very little water. The forests, though thick, afforded no sort of shade, the hunters for the sake of their sport, and the Arabs for destroying the flies, having set fire to all the dry grass and shrubs; which passing with great rapidity in the direction of the wind from east to west, though it had not time to destroy the trees, did yet hinder, and occasion every leaf that was upon them to fall, unless in those spaces where villages had been, and where water was. In such spots a number of large spreading trees remained full of foliage; which, from their great height and being cleared of underwood, continued in full verdure, loaded with large, projecting, and exuberant branches. But even here the pleasure that their shade afforded was very temporary, so as to allow us no time for enjoyment. The sun, so near the zenith, changed his azimuth so rapidly, that every few minutes I was obliged to change the carpet on which I lay, round the trunk of the tree to which I had fled for shelter; and though I lay down to sleep perfectly screened by the trunk or branches, I was presently awakened by the violent rays of a scorching sun, the shade having passed beyond me. In all other places, though we had travelled constantly in a forest, we never met with a tree that could shade us for a moment, the fire having deprived them of all their leaves."

The heat of Atbara is excessive, the thermometer having been observed at 119°: two of Mr Bruce's company died of thirst, or at least of the consequences of drinking after extreme thirst. The inhabitants live in the greatest misery, and are continually in danger from the neighbouring Arabs, who, by destroying and burning their corn, are able to reduce them to a starving condition. Notwithstanding all their disadvantages, however, they have a manufacture of coarse cotton towels, of a size just sufficient to go round the waist, which pass current as money throughout the whole country.