nay, after it is dead they will not touch it, for fear of defiling
themselves, any more than they would do a dead horse. The waalia is
less than the common blue pigeon, but larger than the turtle-dove.
Its whole back, and some of the short feathers of its wings, are of
a beautiful unvarnished green, lighter and livelier than an olive.
Its head and neck are of a deader green, with still less lustre. Its
beak is of a bluish white, with large nostrils; the eye black, with an
iris of dark orange. The pinion, or top of its wing, is a beautiful
pompadour. The large feathers of the wing are black; the outer edge
of the wing narrowly marked with white; the tail a pale, dirty blue;
below the tail it is spotted with brown and white. Its thighs are
white, with small spots of brown; its belly a lively yellow. Its legs
and feet are a yellowish brown. Its feet stronger and larger than is
generally found in this kind of bird. I never heard it coo, or make
any noise. I killed this, and many others, in our road to Tcherkin. In
M. de Buffon’s collection I see a bird resembling this, coming from the
west of Africa, as I remember; but his birds in general are so very
ill-drawn, and his coloured ones so shamefully daubed, that nothing
certain can be founded upon resemblance.
TSALTSALYA, OR FLY.
The insect which we have here before us is a proof how fallacious it is
to judge by appearances. If we consider its small size, its weakness,
want of variety or beauty, nothing in the creation is more contemptible
and insignificant. Yet passing from these to his history, and to the
account of his powers, we must confess the very great injustice we do
him from want of consideration. We are obliged, with the greatest
surprise, to acknowledge, that those huge animals, the elephant, the
rhinoceros, the lion and the tiger, inhabiting the same woods, are
still vastly his inferiors, and that the appearance of this small
insect, nay, his very sound, though he is not seen, occasions more
trepidation, movement, and disorder, both in the human and brute
creation, than would whole herds of these monstrous animals collected
together, though their number was in a tenfold proportion greater than
it really is.
[Illustration: _Tsaltsalya._
_El Adda._
_London. Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
The necessity of keeping my narrative clear and intelligible as I
proceeded, has made me anticipate the principal particularities
relating to this insect. His operations are too materially interwoven
with the history of this country, to be left apart as an episode. The
reader will find the description[84] of its manners in that part of my
history which treats of the Shepherds, and in several places throughout
the narrative he will meet with accounts of the consequences of its
wonderful influence. Providence, from the beginning it would seem,
had fixed its habitation to one species of soil, being a black fat
earth, extraordinary fruitful; and small and inconsiderable as it was,
it seems from the first to have given a law to the settlement of the
country. It prohibited absolutely those inhabitants of the fat earth,
called Mazaga, domiciled in caves and mountains, from enjoying the
help or labour of any beasts of carriage. It deprived them of their
flesh and milk for food, and gave rise to another nation, whose manners
were just the reverse of the first. These were the Shepherds, leading
a wandering life, and preserving these immense herds of cattle by
conducting them into the sands beyond the limits of the black earth,
and bringing them back again when the danger from this insect was over.
We cannot read the history of the plagues which God brought upon
Pharaoh by the hands of Moses, without stopping a moment to consider a
singularity, a very principal one, which attended this plague of the
fly. It was not till this time, and by means of this insect, that God
said, he would separate his people from the Egyptians. And it would
seem, that then a law was given to them, that fixed the limits of their
habitation. It is well known, as I have repeatedly said, that the land
of Goshen, or Geshen, the possession of the Israelites, was a land of
pasture, which was not tilled or sown, because it was not overflowed by
the Nile. But the land overflowed by the Nile was the black earth of
the valley of Egypt, and it was here that God confined the flies; for
he says, it shall be a sign of this separation of the people, which he
had then made, that not one fly should be seen in the sand or pasture
ground, the land of Goshen, and this kind of soil has ever since been
the refuge of all cattle emigrating from the black earth to the lower
part of Atbara. Isaiah, indeed, says, that the fly shall be in all the
desert places, and consequently the sands; yet this was a particular
dispensation of providence, to answer a special end, the desolation of
Egypt, and was not a repeal of the general law, but a confirmation of
it; it was an exception, for a particular purpose, and a limited time.
I have already said so much of this insect, that it would be tiring
my reader’s patience to repeat any thing concerning him. I shall
therefore content myself, by giving a very accurate design of him, only
observing, that, for distinctness sake, I have magnified him something
above twice the natural size. He has no sting, though he seems to me to
be rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and sudden than
that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is
something particular in the sound, or buzzing of this insect. It is a
jarring noise, together with a humming; which induces me to believe it
proceeds, at least in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs
at his snout.
The Chaldee version is content with calling this animal simply Zebub,
which signifies the fly in general, as we express it in English. The
Arabs call it Zimb in their translation, which has the same general
signification. The Ethiopic translation calls it Tsaltsalya, which
is the true name of this particular fly in Geez, and was the same in
Hebrew.
The Greeks have called this species of fly Cynomya, which signifies
the dog-fly, in imitation of which, those, I suppose, of the church
of Alexandria, that, after the coming of Frumentius, were correcting
the Greek copy, and making it conformable to the Septuagint, have
called this fly Tsaltsalya Kelb, to answer the word Cynomya, which
is dog-fly. But this at first sight is a corruption, apparently the
language of strangers, and is not Ethiopic. It is the same as if we
were to couple the two nominative substantives Canis and Musca, to
translate Cynomya. Canis is indeed a dog, and Musca is a fly, but these
two words together, as I have now wrote them, could never be brought
to signify dog-fly. It is the same in the Ethiopic, where Tsaltsalya
alone signifies dog-fly, without the addition of any other word
whatever. What is the derivation of this is doubtful, because there are
several words, both in the Ethiopic and Hebrew, that are exceedingly
apposite and probable. Salal, in the Hebrew, signifies to buzz, or
to hum, and, as it were, alludes to the noise with which this animal
terrifies the cattle: and Tsaltsalya seems to come from this, by only
doubling the radicals. t’Tsalalou, in Amharic, signifies to pierce with
violence; from this is derived Tsalatie, the name of a javelin with a
round point, made to enter the rings of a coat of mail, which, by its
structure, is impervious to the round cutting points of the ordinary
lance or javelin. In the book of Job[85] this seems to mean a trident,
or fishing-spear, and is vaguely enough translated Habergeon in the
English copy. I do not know that this insect, however remarkable for
its activity and numbers, has ever before been described or delineated.
EL ADDA.
There is no genus of quadrupeds that I have known in the east so
very numerous as that of the lizard, or of which there are so many
varieties. The eastern, or desert parts of Syria, bordering upon
Arabia Deserta, which still have moisture sufficient, abound with them
beyond a possibility of counting them. I am positive that I can say,
without exaggeration, that the number I saw one day in the great court
of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec amounted to many thousands; the
ground, the walls and stones of the ruined buildings, were covered
with them, and the various colours of which they consisted made a very
extraordinary appearance, glittering under the sun, in which they lay
sleeping, or basking. It was in vain, in a place so full of wonders as
Baalbec, to think of spending time in designing lizards. I contented
myself with collecting and preserving those I could catch entire, many
of which have perished by the accidents of the journey, though some
of very great beauty have escaped, and are in my collection in great
preservation.
As I went eastward towards the desert, the number of this animal
decreased, I suppose, from a scarcity of water; for example, at
Palmyra, tho’ there were ruins of ancient buildings, and a great
solitude, as at Baalbec, the lizards were few, all of the colour of the
ground, without beauty or variety, and seemingly degenerated in point
of size.
The Arabian naturalists and physicians were better acquainted with the
different species of this animal than any philosophers have been since,
and in all probability than any strangers will ever be; they lived
among them, and had an opportunity of discovering their manners and
every detail of their private œconomy. Happy if succeeding the Greeks
in these studies, they had not too frequently left observation to
deviate into fable; the field, too, which these various species inhabit
is a very extensive one, and comprehends all Asia and Africa, that is,
great portion of the old world, every part of which is, from various
causes, more inaccessible at this day, than after the Arabian conquest.
It is from the Arabian books then that we are to study with attention
the descriptions given of the animals of the country. But very great
difficulties occur in the course of these disquisitions. The books that
contain them are still extant, and all the animals likewise exist as
before; but, unfortunately, the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Arabic, are
languages very ambiguous and equivocal, and are in terms too loose and
vague for modern accuracy and precise description, and especially so
in that of colours; besides, that unbounded liberty of transposition
of letters, and syllables of words, in which the writers of those
languages have indulged themselves, from notions of elegance, seem to
require, not only a very skilful and attentive, but also a judicious
and sober-minded reader, that does not run away with whimsical, or
first conceptions, but weighs the character of his author, the common
idioms of language which he uses, and opportunities of information
that he had concerning the subjects upon which he wrote, in preference
to others that may have treated the same, but who differ from them in
facts.
The small lizard here described is a native of Atbara beyond the rains,
in that situation where we have said the island and city of Meroë
formerly were. It seemed also to be well known by the different black
inhabitants that came from the westward by the great caravan which
crossed the desert north of the Niger, and is called the Caravan of
Sudan, of which I have often spoken, as being the only barbarians who
seem to pay the least attention to any articles of natural history.
These bring to Cairo, and to Mecca, multitudes of green paroquets,
monkeys, weasels, mice, lizards, and serpents, for the diversion and
curiosity of the men of note in Arabia, or of the Beys and the women
of the great at Cairo. This lizard is called El Adda, it burrows in
the sand, and performs this operation so quickly, that it is out of
sight in an instant, and appears rather to have found a hole, than to
have made one, yet it comes out often in the heat of the day, and basks
itself in the sun; and if not very much frightened, will take refuge
behind stones, or in the withered, ragged roots of the absinthium,
dried in the sun to nearly its own colour.
Almost the whole of this large tribe of lizards is, by the Arabians,
described as poisonous. Experiment has detected the falsehood of this,
in very many species; the same idea has led them to attribute to them
medicinal virtues in the same proportion, and, I am apt to believe,
with nearly as little reason; at least, though the books prescribing
them are in everybody’s hands, the remedy is not now made use of in the
places where those books were wrote; and this affords a strong proof
that the medicine was never very efficacious.
The El Adda is one of the few which the Arabs in all times have
believed to be free of poisonous qualities, and yet to have all the
medicinal virtues that they have so abundantly lavished upon the
more noxious species. It has been reputed to be a cure for that most
terrible of all diseases, the Elephantiasis; yet this distemper is
not, that I know, in the hotter parts of Africa, and certainly this
lizard is not an inhabitant of the higher or colder parts of Abyssinia,
which we may call exclusively the domicil of the elephantiasis. It is
likewise thought to be efficacious in cleansing the skin of the body,
or face, from cutaneous eruptions, of which the inhabitants of this
part of Africa are much more afraid than they are of the plague; it
is also used against films, and suffusions on the eyes. I never did
try the effect of any of these, but give their history solely upon the
authority of the Arabian authors.
I have drawn it here of its natural size, which is 6-1/6 inches.
Though its legs are very long, it does not make use of them to stand
upright, but creeps with its belly almost close to the ground. It runs,
however, with very great velocity. It is very long from its shoulder
to its nose, being nearly two inches. Its body is round, having scarce
any flatness in its belly. Its tail too is perfectly round, having no
flatness in its lower part. It is exceedingly sharp-pointed, and very
easily broke, yet I have seen several where the part broke off has been
renewed so as scarcely to be discernible. It is the same length, 2-1/6
inches, between the point of the tail and the joint of the hinder leg,
as was between the nose and the shoulder of the foreleg. Its forehead
from the occiput is flat, its shape conical, not pointed, but rounded
at the end in the shape of some shovels or spades. The head is darker
than the body, the occiput darker still; its face is covered with
fine black lines, which cross one another at right angles like a net.
Its eyes are small, defended with a number of strong black hairs for
eye-lashes. Its upper jaw is longer, and projects considerably over
the under; both its jaws have a number of short, fine, but very feeble
teeth, and when holding it in my hand, though it struggled violently to
get loose, it never attempted to make use of its teeth; indeed it seems
to turn its neck with great difficulty. Its ears are large, open, and
nearly round. Its body is a light-yellow, bordering on a straw-colour,
crossed with eight bands of black, almost equally distant, except
the two next the tail. All these decrease both in breadth and length
from the middle towards each extremity of the animal. The scales are
largest along the back, they are very close, though the divisions are
sufficiently apparent. Their surface is very polished, and seems as if
varnished over. Its legs from the shoulder to the middle toe are nearly
an inch and three quarters long; its feet are composed of five toes,
the extremity of each is armed with a brown claw of no great strength,
whose end is tipt with black.
I have heard some of the common people call this lizard Dhab: This we
are to look upon as an instance of ignorance in the vulgar, rather than
the opinion of a naturalist well informed; for the Dhab is a species
perfectly well known to be different from this, and is frequently met
with in the deserts which surround Cairo.
CERASTES, OR HORNED VIPER.
There is no article of natural history the ancients have dwelt on more
than that of the viper, whether poets, physicians, or historians. All
have enlarged upon the particular sizes, colours, and qualities, yet
the knowledge of their manners is but little extended. Almost every
author that has treated of them, if he hath advanced some truths which
he has left slenderly established by proof or experiment, by way of
compensation, hath added as many falsehoods so strongly asserted, that
they have occasioned more doubt than the others have brought of light,
certainty, and conviction.
[Illustration: _Cerastes._
_London Publish’d Dec^r. 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._
_Heath. Sc._]
Lucan, in Cato’s march through the desert of the Cyrenaicum in Search
of Juba, gives such a catalogue of these venomous animals, that we
cannot wonder, as he insinuates, that great part of the Roman army was
destroyed by them; yet I will not scruple to aver this is mere fable. I
have travelled across the Cyrenaicum in all its directions, and never
saw but one species of viper, which was the Cerastes, or Horned Viper,
now before us. Neither did I ever see any of the snake kind that could
be mistaken for the viper. I apprehend the snake cannot subsist without
water, as the Cerastes, from the places in which he is found, seems
assuredly to do. Indeed those that Lucan speaks of must have been all
vipers, because the mention of every one of their names is followed by
the death of a man.
There are no serpents of any kind in Upper Abyssinia that ever I
saw, and no remarkable varieties even in Low, excepting the large
snake called the Boa, which is often above twenty feet in length, and
as thick as an ordinary man’s thigh. He is a beast of prey, feeds
upon antelopes, and the deer kind, which having no canine teeth,
consequently no poison, he swallows whole, after having broken all
its bones in pieces, and drawn it into a length to be more easily
mastered. His chief residence is by the grassy pools of rivers that are
stagnant. Notwithstanding which, we hear of the Monk Gregory telling
M. Ludolf, that serpents were so frequent in Abyssinia, that every man
carried with him a stick bent in a particular manner, for the more
commodiously killing these creatures, and this M. Ludolf recommends
as a discovery. And Jerome Lobo, among the rest of his fables, has
some on this subject likewise. A cold and rainy country can never be a
habitation for vipers. We see, on the contrary, that their favourite
choice are deserts and burning sand, without verdure, and without any
moisture whatever.
The very learned, though too credulous, Prosper Alpinus, says, that
many have assured him, that near the lakes contiguous to the sources
of the Nile there is a number of basiliscs, about a palm in length,
and the thickness of a middle finger; that they have two large scales,
which they use as wings, and crests and combs upon their head, from
which they are called Basilisci or Reguli, that is, crowned, crested,
or kingly serpents; and he says that no person can approach these lakes
without being destroyed by these crested snakes.
With all submission to this naturalist’s relation, I should imagine
he could not have heard the description of these lakes from many
travellers, if all those that approached them were killed by the
basiliscs. I shall only answer for this, that having examined the Lake
Gooderoo, those of Court Ohha, and Tzana, the only lakes near the
sources of the Nile, I never yet saw one serpent there, whether crowned
or uncrowned, nor did I ever hear of any, and therefore believe this
account as fabulous as that of the Acontia and other animals he speaks
of in this whole chapter[86]. The basilisc is a species of serpent,
frequently made mention of in scripture, though never described,
farther than that he cannot be charmed so as to do no hurt, nor trained
so as to delight in music; which all travellers who have been in Egypt
know is exceedingly possible, and frequently seen. “For, behold, I
will send basiliscs among you, saith the scripture, which will not be
charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord[87]”. And[88] “Thou
shalt tread upon the lion and basilisc[89] &c.”
I shall mention one name more, under which the Cerastes goes, because
it is equivocal, and has been misunderstood in scripture, that is
Tseboa, which name is given it in the Hebrew, from its different
colours and spots. And hence the Greeks[90] have called it by the
name of Hyæna, because it is of the same reddish colour, marked with
black spots as that quadruped is. And the same fable is applied to the
serpent and quadruped, that they change their sex yearly.
Some philosophers, from particular system, have judged from a certain
disposition of this animal’s scales, that it is what they term,
Coluber, while others, from some arrangement of the scales of its tail,
will have it to be what they call Boa. I enter not into the dispute,
it is here as faithfully represented as the size will permit, only I
shall observe that, unless Boa means something more than I know it
does, the name is ill chosen when applied to any species of poisonous
serpents, because it is already the proper name of the large snake,
just mentioned, that is not viviparous, and has no poison. Pliny and
Galen say, that the young vipers are so fierce as to become parricides,
and destroy their mother upon their birth. But this is surely one of
the ill-grounded fancies these authors have adopted. The Cerastes
is mentioned by name in Lucan, and without warranting the separate
existence of any of the rest, I can see several that are but the
Cerastes under another term. The thebanus ophites, the ammodytes, the
torrida dipsas, and the prester[91], all of them are but this viper
described from the form of its parts, or its colours. Cato must have
been marching in the night when he met this army of serpents. The
Cerastes hides itself all day in holes in the sand, where it lives
in contiguous and similar houses to those of the jerboa, and I have
already said, that I never but once found any animal in this viper’s
belly, but one jerboa in a gravid female cerastes.
I kept two of these last-mentioned creatures in a glass jar, such as
is used for keeping sweetmeats, for two years, without having given
them any food; they did not sleep, that I observed, in winter, but cast
their skins the last days of April.
The Cerastes moves with great rapidity, and in all directions, forward,
backward, and sideways. When he inclines to surprise any one who is too
far from him, he creeps with his side towards the person, and his head
averted, till judging his distance, he turns round, springs upon him,
and fastens upon the part next to him; for it is not true what is said,
that the Cerastes does not leap or spring. I saw one of them at Cairo,
in the house of Julian and Rosa, crawl up the side of a box, in which
there were many, and there lye still as if hiding himself, till one of
the people who brought them to us came near him, and though in a very
disadvantageous posture, sticking as it were perpendicular to the side
of the box, he leaped near the distance of three feet, and fastened
between the man’s forefinger and thumb, so as to bring the blood. The
fellow shewed no signs of either pain or fear, and we kept him with
us full four hours, without his applying any sort of remedy, or his
seeming inclined to do so.
To make myself assured that the animal was in its perfect state, I made
the man hold him by the neck so as to force him to open his mouth, and
lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I had tamed, as big as a swan.
The bird died in about 13 minutes, though it was apparently affected in
50 seconds; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, because a very
few minutes before, it had bit the man, and so discharged part of its
virus, and it was made to scratch the pelican by force, without any
irritation or action of its own.
The Cerastes inhabits the greatest part of the eastern continent,
especially the desert sandy parts of it. It abounds in Syria, in the
three Arabias, and in Africa. I never saw so many of them as in the
Cyrenaicum, where the Jerboa is frequent in proportion. He is a great
lover of heat; for tho’ the sun was burning hot all day, when we made
a fire at night, by digging a hole, and burning wood to charcoal in it,
for dressing our victuals, it was seldom we had fewer than half a dozen
of these vipers, who burnt themselves to death approaching the embers.
I apprehend this to be the aspic which Cleopatra employed to procure
her death. Alexandria, plentifully supplied by water, must then have
had fruit of all kinds in its gardens. The baskets of figs must have
come from thence, and the aspic, or Cerastes, that was hid in them,
from the adjoining desert, where there are plenty to this day; for to
the westward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, there is no sort of
serpent whatever that I ever saw; nor, as I have before said, is there
any other of the mortal kind that I know in those parts of Africa
adjoining to Egypt, excepting the Cerastes.