Chapter 19 - The Waterhorse

Such a short, yet poignant, chapter. Claire's strange encounter with the waterhorse is the stuff that any out-of-town visitor to Loch Ness would relish.

It gave me an odd feeling to see the place again; so little had changed. Or would change, I should say.

I love how this simple statement made my brain skip for a moment; I had to re-think what the implications were and then....ohhhh yeah, that makes sense. Any changes Claire had previously seen were actually after the fact; a little reminder of her current time-challenge predicament.

As she watches the tentative waterhorse (or, rather, they watch each other), Claire describes the animal compared to the replica she had previously seen at the British museum, and how recognizable the basic shape was:

The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.

Diana's naturalist side seems to be poking out through there, as well.

Peter, one of the drovers of their party, also witnesses Claire's encounter with the waterhorse, and Claire finds the superstitious nature of highlanders is alive and well.

“Ha-have mercy, lady,” he stammered. To my extreme embarrassment, he then flung himself flat on his face and clutched at the hem of my dress. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said with some asperity. “Get up...It’s only a wee monster,” I said at last, and grabbing his hand, tugged him to his feet.

What I love about this book is the little side-trips I can take while thinking about the current chapter. In this instance, it occurred to me that I didn't know the origin of the term "waterhorse" and thought it would be interesting to find out.

From what I can tell, the waterhorse is considered a mythical animal based on Greek stories of the hippocampus, a water creature with webbed feet and the head similar to a horse's.

A rendering of a hippocampus from the early 1500's.

Finding the picture above led me to discover Conrad Gessner, a botanist from the 1500's from whose book this image is taken. Seems that Conrad was also an innovator, and that prior to his contributions to the literary world, naturalist books were rarely found with pictures, but his were full of beautiful woodcuts like the above. Nowadays it seems difficult to imagine describing various botanical items without any pictures to help describe them.

I also enjoy using pictures for other reasons: