When the traveller, Ignatius Pallme, was at Kordofan, he saw in the
court of a house at Lobeid, a hyæna running about quite domesticated.
The children of the proprietor tamed it, took the meat thrown to it for
food out of its jaws, and put their hands even to its throat without
receiving the slightest injury. When the family sat down to dinner in
the open air, the animal approached the table, and snapped up the pieces
that were thrown to it, like a dog. A full-grown hyæna and her two cubs,
on another occasion, were brought to our traveller for sale; the latter
were carried in arms, as you might carry a lamb, and were not even
muzzled. The old one, it is true, had a rope round her snout, but she
had been led a distance of twelve miles by one man without offering the
least resistance. The Africans do not even reckon the hyæna among the
wild beasts of their country, for they are not afraid of it.
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