that the famous animal, having one horn only upon his forehead,
is the fanciful creation of poets and painters; to them I should
willingly leave it, but a Swedish naturalist, Dr Sparman, who has
lately published two volumes in quarto, in which he has distinguished
himself by his low illiberal abuse of learned foreigners, as much as
by the fulsome flattery he has bestowed on his own countrymen, has
shewed an inclination to revive this antiquated fable. I do not, for
my own part, believe the authority will be thought sufficient, or have
many followers. The publisher, by way of apology, as suppose, for his
rusticity and ill-manners, says, that he was employed in labour to earn
a sufficient sum upon which to travel. What labour he applied to is not
said; it was not a lucrative occupation surely, or the Doctor was not
an able labourer, as the sum produced was but 38 dollars, and I really
think his knowledge acquired seems to be pretty much in proportion to
his funds.
Kolbe mentions what would seem a variety of the rhinoceros at the
Cape. He says it has one horn upon its nose, and another upon his
forehead. This the Count de Buffon thinks is untrue, and, from other
circumstances of the narrative, supposes that Kolbe never saw this
rhinoceros, and has described it only from hearsay. Though this, too,
is Doctor Sparman’s opinion, yet, unwilling to let slip an opportunity
of contradicting the Count de Buffon, he taxes it as an improper
criticism upon this rhinoceros of Kolbe: he says the description is
a just one, and that a man of the Count’s learning should have known
that the forehead and nose of all animals were _near_ each other.
Although he has given a strange drawing of the skeleton of the head
of a rhinoceros, where the nose and the forehead are very distinctly
different, yet, in another drawing, he has figured his rhinoceros
bicornis, with a head seemingly all nose, and much liker an ass than
any thing we have seen pretended to be a rhinoceros ever since the
time of Albert Durer. He pretends that, in his travels at the Cape, he
saw an animal of this form, which had two horns upon his forehead, or
his nose, whichever he pleases to call them. If such an animal does
really exist, it is undoubtedly a new species; it has not the armour
or plaited skin, seen in every rhinoceros till this time. He tells us
a heap of wonderful stories about it, and claims the honour of being
the first discoverer of it; and really, I believe, he is so far in the
right, that if he can prove what he says to be true, there is no man
that will pretend to dispute this point with him. Besides its having
a skin without plaits, it has two horns on the forehead, so loose
that they clash against one another, and make a noise when the animal
is running: then he has one of these only that are moveable, which
he turns to one side or the other when he chooses to dig roots; an
imagination scarcely possible, I think, to any one who has ever seen a
rhinoceros. With these loose and clashing horns he diverts himself by
throwing a man and horse into the air; and, though but five feet high,
at other times he throws a loaded, covered waggon, drawn by two
oxen, over hedges into the fields.
[Illustration: _Hyæna_
_London Publish’d Jan.^y 19.^{th} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co._]
This rhinoceros very luckily is not carnivorous, for he is among the
swiftest of animals, and smells and scents people at a great distance;
and yet, with all these advantages, though his constant occupation,
according to Dr Sparman, seems to be hunting waggons and men also, he
never was so successful as to kill but one man, as far as was ever
known.
HYÆNA.
There are few animals, whose history has passed under the consideration
of naturalists, that have given occasion to so much confusion and
equivocation as the Hyæna has done. It began very early among the
ancients, and the moderns have fully contributed their share. It is not
my intention to take up the reader’s time with discussing the errors
of others, whether ancient or modern. Without displaying a great deal
of learning to tell him what it is not, I shall content myself with
informing him what it is, by a good figure and distinct relation of
what in his history hath been unknown, or omitted, and put it in the
reader’s power to reject any of the pretended Hyænas that authors or
travellers should endeavour to impose upon him. At the same time, I
shall submit to his decision, whether the animal I mention is a new
one, or only a variety of the old, as it must on all hands be allowed
that he is as yet undescribed.
Most of the animals confounded with him are about six times smaller
than he is, and some there are that do not even use their four legs,
but only two. The want of a critical knowledge in the Arabic language,
and of natural history at the same time, has in some measure been
the occasion of this among the moderns. Bochart[46] discusses the
several errors of the ancients with great judgment, and the Count
de Buffon[47], in a very elegant and pleasant manner, hath nearly
exhausted the whole.
I do not think there is any one that hath hitherto written of this
animal who ever saw the thousandth part of them that I have. They were
a plague in Abyssinia in every situation, both in the city and in the
field, and I think surpassed the sheep in number. Gondar was full
of them from the time it turned dark till the dawn of day, seeking
the different pieces of slaughtered carcases which this cruel and
unclean people expose in the streets without burial, and who firmly
believe that these animals are Falasha from the neighbouring mountains,
transformed by magic, and come down to eat human flesh in the dark in
safety. Many a time in the night, when the king had kept me late in
the palace, and it was not my duty to lie there, in going across the
square from the king’s house, not many hundred yards distant, I have
been apprehensive they would bite me in the leg. They grunted in great
numbers about me, though I was surrounded with several armed men, who
seldom passed a night without wounding or slaughtering some of them.
One night in Maitsha, being very intent on observation, I heard
something pass behind me towards the bed, but upon looking round could
perceive nothing. Having finished what I was then about, I went out of
my tent, resolving directly to return, which I immediately did, when I
perceived large blue eyes glaring at me in the dark. I called upon my
servant with a light, and there was the hyæna standing nigh the head
of the bed, with two or three large bunches of candles in his mouth.
To have fired at him I was in danger of breaking my quadrant or other
furniture, and he seemed, by keeping the candles steadily in his mouth,
to wish for no other prey at that time. As his mouth was full, and he
had no claws to tear with, I was not afraid of him, but with a pike
struck him as near the heart as I could judge. It was not till then he
shewed any sign of fierceness; but, upon feeling his wound, he let drop
the candles, and endeavoured to run up the shaft of the spear to arrive
at me, so that, in self defence, I was obliged to draw out a pistol
from my girdle and shoot him, and nearly at the same time my servant
cleft his skull with a battle-ax. In a word, the hyæna was the plague
of our lives, the terror of our night-walks, the destruction of our
mules and asses, which above all others are his favourite food. Many
instances of this the reader will meet with throughout my Travels.
The hyæna is known by two names in the east, Deeb and Dubbah. His
proper name is Dubbah, and this is the name he goes by among the best
Arabian naturalists. In Abyssinia, Nubia, and part of Arabia, he is,
both in writing and conversation, called Deeb, or Deep, either ending
with a b or p; and here the confusion begins, for though Dubbah is
properly a hyæna, Dabbu is a species of monkey; and though Deeb is
likewise a hyæna, the same word signifies a jackal; and a jackal being
by naturalists called a wolf, Deeb is understood to be a wolf also. In
Algiers this difference is preserved strictly; Dubbah is the hyæna;
Deeb is the jackal, which run in flocks in the night, crying like
hounds. Dubb is a bear, so here is another confusion, and the bear is
taken for the hyæna, because Dubb, or Dubbah, seems to be the same
word. So Poncet, on the frontiers of Sennaar, complains, that one of
his mules was bit in the thigh by a bear, though it is well known there
never was any animal of the bear-kind in that, or, I believe, in any
other part of Africa. And I strongly apprehend, that the leopards and
tigers, which Alvarez and Don Roderigo de Lima mention molested them
so much in their journey to Shoa, were nothing else but hyænas. For
tigers there are certainly none in Abyssinia; it is an Asiatic animal.
Though there are leopards, yet they are but few in number, and are
not gregarious, neither, indeed, are the hyænas, only as they gather
in flocks, lured by the smell of their food; and of these it would
seem there are many in Shoa, for the capital of that province, called
Tegulat, means the City of the Hyæna.
If the description given by M. de Buffon is an elegant and good one,
the draught of the animal is no less so. It is exactly the same
creature I have seen on Mount Libanus and at Aleppo, which makes me
have the less doubt that there are two species of this animal, the one
partaking more of the dog, which is the animal I am now describing,
the other more of the nature of the hog, which is the hyæna of M. de
Buffon. Of this the reader will be easily satisfied, by comparing the
two figures and the measures of them. The same distinction there is in
the badger.
The animal from which this was drawn was slain at Teawa, and was
the largest I had ever seen, being five feet nine inches in length,
measuring from his nose to his anus; whereas the hyæna exhibited by M.
de Buffon was not half that, it being only three feet two inches nine
lines in length. Notwithstanding the great superiority in size by which
the hyæna of Atbara exceeded that of M. de Buffon, I did not think him
remarkable for his fatness, or that he owed any of his size to his
being at that time in more than ordinary keeping; on the contrary, I
thought the most of those I had before seen were in a better habit
of body. As near as I could guess, he might weigh about 8 stone,
horseman’s weight, that is, 14 pound to the stone, or 112 pound.
The length of his tail, from the longest hair in it to its insertion
above the anus, was one foot nine inches. It was composed of strong
hair of a reddish, brown colour, without any rings or bands of
blackness upon the points. In the same manner, the mane consisted of
hairs exactly similar both in colour and substance, being longer as
they approached the neck, where they were about seven inches long; and
though it was obvious that, upon being irritated, he could raise them
upon his back, yet they were not rigid enough, and were too long to
have the resistance of bristles of the hog or boar. This mane reached
above two inches beyond the occiput between his ears, but then turned
short, and ended there.
From the occiput to his nose he was one foot three inches and a half.
The length of the nose, from the bottom of the forehead, was five
inches and a half, in shape much like that of a dog, the whole head,
indeed, more so than that of the wolf or any other creature. The
aperture of the eye was two inches nearly; that of the mouth, when not
gaping or snarling, about four inches and a half. The ear, from its
base to its extreme point, was nine inches and a quarter; it was mostly
bare, or covered with very thin, short hair. From the inside of one ear
to that of the other, measured across the forehead, was seven inches
and a half. From the edge of the opening of one eye to that of the
other, measured in the same manner, it was three inches nearly. From
the sole of the fore-foot, as it stood on the ground, to the top of the
back above the shoulder, it was three feet seven inches; but his back
was smooth and plain, not rising or curved as the hyæna of M. de Buffon
appears to have been. The fore-leg was two feet in length, the foot
flat, and four inches broad. From the sole of the foot to the middle of
the fore joint was six inches and a half, and this joint seemed to be
ill-made, and as it were crooked and half bent. He has four toes, and a
straight nail between each of them, greatly resembling that of a dog,
strong and black, but by no means calculated for tearing animals, and
as little for digging, by which occupation he is said chiefly to get
his food.
He stands ill upon his hind-legs, nor can his measure there be marked
with precision. It is observable in all hyænas, that when they are
first dislodged from cover, or obliged to run, they limp so remarkably
that it would appear the hind-leg was broken, and this has often
deceived me; but, after they have continued to run some time, this
affection goes entirely away, and they move very swiftly. To what this
is owing it is impossible for me to say. I expected to have found
something likely to be the origin of it in the dissection of this
animal given by M. de Buffon, but no such thing appears, and I fear it
is in vain to look for it elsewhere.
I apprehend from the sole of his hind-foot to the joining of the thigh
at his belly, was nearer two feet seven inches than any other measure.
The belly is covered with hair very little softer and shorter than
that of his back. It grows shorter as it approaches his hind-legs. His
colour is of a yellowish brown, the head and ears the lightest part
of him. The legs are marked thick with black bands which begin at the
lower hinder joint, then continue very dark in colour till the top of
the thigh, where they turn broad and circular, reaching across the
whole side. Over the shoulder are two semicircular bands likewise, then
come very frequent bands down the outside of the fore-leg in the same
manner as the hind. The inside of all his legs are without marks, so
are the neck, head, and ears, but a little above the thorax is a large
black streak which goes up along the throat, and down to the point of
the lower jaw. His nose is black, and above the point, for some inches,
is of a dark colour also.
The Hyæna is one of those animals which commentators have taken for
the Saphan, without any probability whatever, further than he lives in
caves, whither he retires in the summer to avoid being tormented with
flies. Clement[48] of Alexandria introduces Moses saying, You shall
not eat the hare, nor the hyæna, as he interprets the word saphan; but
the Hyæna does not chew the cud; they are not, as I say, gregarious,
though they troop together upon the smell of food. We have no reason to
attribute extraordinary wisdom to him; he is on the contrary brutish,
indolent, slovenly, and impudent, and seems to possess much the
manners of the wolf. His courage appears to proceed from an insatiable
appetite, and has nothing of the brave or generous in it, and he dies
oftener flying than fighting; but least of all can it be said of him
that he is a _feeble folk_, being one of the strongest beasts of the
field.
Upon the most attentive consideration, the animal here represented
seems to be of a different species from the hyæna of M. de Buffon. This
of Atbara seems to be a dog, whereas the first sight of the hyæna of M.
de Buffon gives the idea of a hog, and this is the impression it seems
to have made upon the first travellers that describe him. Kempfer[49]
calls him Taxus Porcinus, and says he has bristles like a hog.
We have an example of variety of this sort in the badger. There is a
sow of that kind, and a dog. The dog is carnivorous, and the sow lives
upon vegetables, though both of them have been suspected at times to
eat and devour animal food.
The hyæna about Mount Libanus, Syria, the north of Asia, and also about
Algiers, is known to live for the most part upon large succulent,
bulbous roots, especially those of the fritillaria, and such large,
fleshy, vegetable substances. I have known large spaces of fields
turned up to get at onions or roots of those plants, and these were
chosen with such care, that, after having been peeled, they have been
refused and left on the ground for a small rotten spot being discovered
in them. It will be observed the hyæna has no claws either for seizing
or separating animal food, that he might feed upon it, and I therefore
imagine his primitive manner of living was rather upon vegetables than
upon flesh, as it is certain he still continues his liking to the
former; and I apprehend it is from an opportunity offering in a hungry
time that he has ventured either upon man or beast, for few carnivorous
animals, such as lions, tigers, and wolves, ever feed upon both.
As to the charge against him of his disturbing sepulchres, I fancy it
is rather supposed from his being unable to seize his living prey
that he is thought to attach himself to the dead. Upon much inquiry
I never found one example fairly proved. The graves in the east are
built over with mason-work; and though it is against the law of the
Turks to repair these when they fall down, yet the body is probably
consumed long before that happens; nor is the hyæna provided with arms
or weapons to attempt it in its entire state; and the large plants and
flowers, with fleshy bulbous roots, are found generally in plenty among
the graves.
But the hyæna of Atbara seems long to have abandoned his primitive food
of roots, if that was ever his, and to have gone largely and undeniably
into the slaughter of living creatures, especially that of men. Indeed,
happily for himself, he has adopted this succedaneum; for as to roots
or fruit of any kind, they are not to be found in the desert country
where he has chosen his domicil; and he has no difficulty from the
sepulchres, because whole nations perish without one of them being
buried. Add to this, that the depravity of human nature, the anarchy
and bad government of the country, have given him greater opportunities
than anywhere else in the world to obtain frequent and easy victories
over man.
It is a constant observation in Numidia, that the lion avoids and flies
from the face of man, till by some accident they have been brought to
engage, and the beast has prevailed against him; then that feeling of
superiority imprinted by the Creator in the heart of all animals for
man’s preservation, seems to forsake him. The lion, having once tasted
human blood, relinquishes the pursuit after the flock. He repairs to
some high way or frequented path, and has been known, in the kingdom of
Tunis, to interrupt the road to a market for several weeks; and in this
he persists till hunters or soldiers are sent out to destroy him.
The same, but in a much greater extent, happens in Atbara. The Arabs,
the inhabitants of that country, live in encampments in different
parts of the country, their ancient patrimony or conquest. Here
they plow and sow, dig wells, and have plenty of water; the ground
produces large crops, and all is prosperity so long as there is peace.
Insolence and presumption follow ease and riches. A quarrel happens
with a neighbouring clan, and the first act of hostility, or decisive
advantage, is the one burning the others crop at the time when it
is near being reaped. Inevitable famine follows; they are provided
with no stores, no stock in hand, their houses are burnt, their wells
filled up, the men slain by their enemies, and many thousands of the
helpless remainder left perfectly destitute of necessaries; and that
very spot, once a scene of plenty, in a few days is reduced to an
absolute desert. Most of the miserable survivors die before they can
reach the next water; they have no subsistence by the way; they wander
among the acacia-trees, and gather gum. There, every day losing their
strength, and destitute of all hope, they fall spontaneously, as it
were, into the jaws of the merciless hyæna, who finding so very little
difference or difficulty between slaying the living and devouring the
dead, follows the miserable remains of this unfortunate multitude,
till he has extirpated the last individual of them. Thence it comes
that we find it remarked in my return through the desert, that the
whole country is strewed with bones of the dead; horrid monuments of
the victories of this savage animal, and of man more savage and cruel
than he. From the ease with which he overcomes these half-starved
and unarmed people, arises the calm, steady confidence in which he
surpasses all the rest of his kind.
In Barbary I have seen the Moors in the day-time take this animal by
the ears and pull him towards them, without his attempting any other
resistance than that of his drawing back: and the hunters, when his
cave is large enough to give them admittance, take a torch in their
hand, and go straight to him; when, pretending to fascinate him by
a senseless jargon of words which they repeat, they throw a blanket
over him, and haul him out. He seems to be stupid or senseless in the
day, or at the appearance of strong light, unless when pursued by the
hunters.
I have locked up a goat, a kid, and a lamb with him all day when he was
fasting, and found them in the evening, alive and unhurt. Repeating the
experiment one night, he ate up a young ass, a goat, and a fox, all
before morning, so as to leave nothing but some small fragments of the
ass’s bones.
In Barbary, then, he has no courage by day; he flies from man, and
hides himself from him: But in Abyssinia or Atbara, accustomed to man’s
flesh, he walks boldly in the day-time like a horse or mule, attacks
man wherever he finds him, whether armed or unarmed, always attaching
himself to the mule or ass in preference to the rider. I may safely
say, I speak within bounds, that I have fought him above fifty times
hand to hand, with a lance or spear, when I had fallen unexpectedly
upon him among the tents, or in defence of my servants or beasts.
Abroad and at a distance the gun prevented his nearer approach; but in
the night, evening, or morning, we were constantly in close engagement
with him.
This frequent victory over man, and his daily feeding upon him without
resistance, is that from which he surely draws his courage. Whether to
this food it is that he owes his superior size, I will not pronounce.
For my own part, I consider him as a variety of the same rather
than another species. At the same time I must say, his form gave me
distinctly the idea of a dog, without one feature or likeness of the
hog, as was the case with the Syrian hyæna living on Mount Libanus,
which is that of M. de Buffon, as plainly appears by his drawing.
I have oftentimes hinted in the course of my Travels at the liking he
has for mules and asses; but there is another passion for which he is
still more remarkable, that is, his liking to dog’s flesh, or, as it is
commonly expressed, his aversion to dogs. No dog, however fierce, will
touch him in the field. My greyhounds, accustomed to fasten upon the
wild boar, would not venture to engage with him. On the contrary, there
was not a journey I made that he did not kill several of my greyhounds,
and once or twice robbed me of my whole flock: he would seek and seize
them in the servants tents where they were tied, and endeavour to carry
them away before the very people that were guarding them.
This animosity between him and dogs, though it has escaped modern
naturalists, appears to have been known to the ancients in the east.
In Ecclesiasticus (chap. xiii. ver. 18.) it is said, “What agreement
is there between the hyæna and the dog?” a sufficient proof that the
antipathy was so well known as to be proverbial.
And I must here observe, that if there is any precision in the
definition of Linnæus, this animal does not answer to it, either in
the cauda recta or annulata, for he never carries his tail erect, but
always close behind him like a dog when afraid, or unless when he is
in full speed; nor is the figure given by M. de Buffon marked like the
hyæna of Atbara, though, as have I said, perfectly resembling that
of Syria, and the figure I have here given has, I believe, scarcely
a hair misplaced in it. Upon the whole, I submit this entirely to my
reader, being satisfied with having, I hope, fully proved what was the
intent of this dissertation, that the saphan is not the hyæna, as Greek
commentators upon the scripture have imagined.
[Illustration: _Jerboa._
_London Published Dec^r. 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]
JERBOA.