Part 11

At their banquets of raw meat, the flesh being cut in small bits, is wrapt up in pieces of this bread, with a proportion of fossile salt and Cayenne pepper. Before the company sits down to eat, a number of these cakes of different qualities are placed one upon the other, in the same manner as our plates, and the principal people, sitting first down, eat the white Teff; the second, or coarser sort, serves the second-rate people that succeed them, and the third is for the servants. Every man, when he is done, dries or wipes his fingers upon the bread which he is to leave for his successor, for they have no towels, and this is one of the most beastly customs of the whole.

The Teff bread, when well toasted, is put into a large jar, after being broken into small pieces, and warm water poured upon it. It is then set by the fire, and frequently stirred for several days, the mouth of the jar being close covered. After being allowed to settle three or four days, it acquires a sourish taste, and is what they call Bouza, or the common beer of the country. The bouza in Atbara is made in the same manner, only, instead of Teff, cakes of barley-meal are employed; both are very bad liquors, but the worst is that made of barley.

The plant is herbaceous: from a number of weak leaves proceeds a stalk of about twenty-eight inches in length, not perfectly straight, smooth, but jointed or knotted at particular distances. This stalk is not much thicker than that of a carnation or jellyflower. About eight inches from the top, a head is formed of a number of small branches, upon which it carries the fruit and flowers; the latter of which is small, of a crimson colour, and scarcely perceptible by the naked eye, but from the opposition of that colour. The pistil is divided into two, seemingly attached to the germ of the fruit, and has at each end small capillaments forming a brush. The stamina are three in number, two on the lower side of the pistil, and one on the upper. These are, each of them, crowned with two oval stigmata, at first green, but after, crimson. The fruit is formed in a capsula, consisting of two conical, hollow leaves, which, when closed, seems to compose a small conical pod, pointed at the top. The fruit, or seed, is oblong, and is not so large as the head of the smallest pin, yet it is very prolific, and produces these seeds in such quantity as to yield a very abundant crop in the quantity of meal.

Whether this grain was ever known to the Greeks and Romans, is what we are no where told. Indeed, the various grains made use of in antiquity, are so lamely and poorly described, that, unless it is a few of the most common, we cannot even guess at the rest. Pliny mentions several of them, but takes no notice of any of their qualities, but medicinal ones; some he specifies as growing in Gaul, others in the Campania of Rome, but takes no notice of those of Ethiopia or Egypt. Among these there is one which he calls Tiphe, but says not whence it came; the name would induce us to believe that this was Teff, but we can only venture this as a conjecture not supported. But it is very improbable, connected as Egypt and Ethiopia were from the first ages, both by trade and religion, that a grain of such consequence to one nation should be utterly unknown to the other. It is not produced in the low or hot country, the Kolla, that is, in the borders of it; for no grain can grow, as I have already said, in the Kolla or Mazaga itself; but in place of Teff, in these borders, there grows a black grain called Tocusso. The stalk of this is scarce a foot long; it has four divisions where the grain is produced, and seems to be a species of the meiem msalib, or gramen crucis, the grass of the cross. Of this a very black bread is made, ate only by the poorest sort; but though it makes worse bread, I think it makes better bouza.

Some have thought, from the frequent use of Teff, hath come that disease of worms which I have mentioned in the article Cusso. But I am inclined to think this is not the case, because the Gibbertis, or Mahometans, born in Abyssinia, all use Teff in the same proportion as the Christians, yet none of these are troubled with worms. And from this I should be led to think that this disease arises rather from eating raw meat, which the Mahometans do not, and therefore are not affected with this disorder as the Christians are.

OF QUADRUPEDS.

I believe there is in the world no country which produces a greater number, or variety of quadrupeds, whether tame or wild, than Abyssinia. As the high country is now perfectly cleared of wood, by the waste made in that article from the continual march of armies, the mountains are covered to the very top, with perpetual verdure, and most luxuriant herbage.

The long rains in summer are not suddenly absorbed by the rays of the sun: a thick veil defends the ground when it is in the zenith, or near it, affording heat to promote vegetation without withering it by destroying the moisture, and by this means a never-failing store of provender is constantly provided for all sorts of cattle. Of the tame or cow-kind, great abundance present themselves everywhere, differing in size, some having horns of various dimensions; some without horns at all, differing also in the colour and length of their hair, by having bosses upon their backs, according as their pasture or climate varies. There are kinds also destined to various uses; some for carriage, like mules or asses, some to be rode upon like horses; and these are not the largest of that kind, but generally below the middle size. As for that species bearing the monstrous horns, of which I have often spoke in my narrative, their size is not to be estimated by that of their horns; the animal itself is not near so big as a common English cow; the growth of the horn is a disease which proves fatal to them, because encouraged for a peculiar purpose. Whether it would be otherwise curable, has not yet, I believe, been ever ascertained by experiment. But the reader may with confidence assure himself, that there are no such animals as carnivorous bulls in Africa, and that this story has been invented for no other purpose but a desire to exhibit an animal worthy of wearing these prodigious horns. I have always wished that this article, and some others of early date, were blotted out of our philosophical transactions; they are absurdities to be forgiven to infant physic and to early travels, but they are unworthy of standing among the cautious, well-supported narratives of our present philosophers. Though we may say of the buffaloe that it is of this kind, yet we cannot call it a tame animal here; so far from that, it is the most ferocious in the country where he resides; this, however, is not in the high temperate part of Abyssinia, but in the sultry Kolla, or valleys below, where, without hiding himself, as wild beasts generally do, as if conscious, of superiority of strength, he lyes at his ease among large spreading shady trees near the clearest and deepest rivers, or the largest stagnant pools of the purest water. Notwithstanding this, he is in his person as dirty and slovenly as he is fierce, brutal, and indocile; he seems to maintain among his own kind the same character for manners that the wolf does among the carnivorous tribe.

But what is very particular is, this is the only animal kept for giving milk in Egypt. And though apparently these are of the same species, and came originally from Ethiopia, their manners are so entirely changed by their migration, difference of climate or of food, that, without the exertion of any art to tame them, they are milked, conducted to and fro, and governed by children of ten years old, without apprehension, or any unlucky accident having ever happened.

Among the wild animals are prodigious numbers of the gazel, or antelope kind; the bohur, sassa, secho, and madoqua, and various others; these are seldom found in the cultivated country, or where cattle pasture, as they chiefly feed on trees; for the most part, they are found in broken ground near the banks of rivers, where, during the heat of the day, they conceal themselves, and sleep under cover of the bushes; they are still more numerous in those provinces whose inhabitants have been extirpated, and the houses ruined or burnt in time of war, and where wild oats, grown up so as to cover the whole country, afford them a quiet residence, without being disturbed by man. Of this I have mentioned a very remarkable instance in the first attempt I made to discover the source of the Nile, (vol. III. p. 439.) The hyæna is still more numerous: enough has been said about him; I apprehend that there are two species. There are few varieties of the dog or fox kind. Of these the most numerous is the Deep, or, as he is called, the Jackal; this is precisely the same in all respects as the Deep of Barbary and Syria, who are heard hunting in great numbers, and howling in the evening and morning. The true Deep, as far as appears to me, is not yet known, at least I never yet saw in any author a figure that resembled him. The wild boar, smaller and smoother in the hair than that of Barbary or Europe, but differing in nothing else, is met frequently in swamps or banks of rivers covered with wood. As he is accounted unclean in Abyssinia, both by Christians and Mahometans, consequently not persecuted by the hunter, both he and the fox should have multiplied; but it is probable they, and many other beasts, when young, are destroyed by the voracious hyæna.

The elephant, rhinoceros, giraffa, or camelopardalis, are inhabitants of the low hot country; nor is the lion, or leopard, faadh, which is the panther, seen in the high and cultivated country. There are no tigers in Abyssinia, nor, as far as I know, in Africa; it is an Asiatic animal; for what reason some travellers, or naturalists, have called him the tiger-wolf, or mistaken him altogether for the tiger, is what I cannot discover. Innumerable flocks of apes, and baboons of different kinds, destroy the fields of millet every where; these, and an immense number of common rats, make great destruction in the country and harvest. I never saw a rabbit in Abyssinia, but there is plenty of hares; this, too, is an animal which they reckon unclean; and not being hunted for food, it should seem they ought to have increased to greater numbers. It is probable, however, that the great quantity of eagles, vultures, and beasts of prey, has kept them within reasonable bounds. The hippopotamus and crocodile abound in all the rivers, not only of Abyssinia, but as low down as Nubia and Egypt: there is no good figure nor description extant, as far as I know, of either of these animals; some unforeseen accident always thwarted and prevented my supplying this deficiency. There are many of the ass kind in the low country towards the frontiers of Atbara, but no Zebras; these are the inhabitants of Fazuclo and Narea.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Heath. Sc.]

RHINOCEROS.

Naturalists seem now in general to be agreed that there are two species of this quadruped, the first having two horns upon his nose, the second one. It is also a generally received opinion, that these different species are confined to distant places of the old continent; that with one horn is thought to be exclusively an inhabitant of Asia, that with two horns to be only found in Africa.

Whether this division is right in all its parts, I shall not advance. That there is a rhinoceros in Asia with one horn is what we positively know, but that there is none of the other species in that part of the continent does not appear to me as yet so certain. Again, there is no sort of doubt, that though the rhinoceros with two horns is an inhabitant of Africa, yet is it as certain that the species with one horn is often found in that country likewise, especially in the eastern part, where is the myrrh and cinnamon country, towards Cape Gardefan, which runs into the Indian ocean beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb. And if I was to credit the accounts which the natives of the respective countries have given me, I should be induced to believe that the rhinoceros of the kingdom of Adel had but one horn. They say this is the case where little rain falls, as in Adel, which, though within the tropics, is not liable to that several months deluge, as is the inland part of the country more to the westward. They say further, that all that woody part inhabited by Shangalla, corresponding to Tigré and Siré, is the haunt of the rhinoceros with two horns. Whether this is really the case I do not pretend to aver, I give the reader the story with the authority; I think it is probable; but as in all cases where very few observations can be repeated, as in this, I leave him entirely to the light of his own understanding.

The animal represented in this drawing is a native of Tcherkin, near Ras el Feel, of the hunting of which I have already spoken in my return through the desert to Egypt, and this is the first drawing of the rhinoceros with a double horn that has ever yet been presented to the public. The first figure of the Asiatic rhinoceros, the species having but one horn, was painted by Albert Durer, from the life, from one of those sent from India by the Portuguese in the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was wonderfully ill-executed in all its parts, and was the origin of all the monstrous forms under which that animal has been painted, ever since, in all parts of the world. Several modern philosophers have made amends for this in our days; Mr Parsons, Mr Edwards, and the Count de Buffon, have given good figures of it from life; they have indeed some faults, owing chiefly to preconceived prejudices and inattention. These, however, were rhinoceroses with one horn, all Asiatics. This, as I have before said, is the first that has been published with two horns, it is designed from the life, and is an African; but as the principal difference is in the horn, and as the manners of this beast are, I believe, very faithfully described and common to both species, I shall only note what I think is deficient in his history, or what I can supply from having had an opportunity of seeing him alive and at freedom in his native woods.

It is very remarkable, that two such animals as the elephant and rhinoceros should have wholly escaped the description of the sacred writers. Moses, and the children of Israel, were long in the neighbourhood of the countries that produced them, both while in Egypt and in Arabia. The classing of the animals into clean and unclean, seems to have led the legislator into a kind of necessity of describing, in one of the classes, an animal, which made the food of the principal Pagan nations in the neighbourhood. Considering the long and intimate connection Solomon had with the south-coast of the Red Sea, it is next to impossible that he was not acquainted with them, as both David his father, and he, made plentiful use of ivory, as they frequently mention in their writings, which, along with gold, came from the same part. Solomon, besides, wrote expressly upon Zoology, and, we can scarce suppose, was ignorant of two of the principal articles of that part of the creation, inhabitants of the great Continent of Asia east from him, and that of Africa on the south, with both which territories he was in constant correspondence.

There are two animals, named frequently in scripture, without naturalists being agreed what they are. The one is the behemoth, the other the reem, both mentioned as the types of strength, courage, and independence on man, and as such exempted from the ordinary lot of beasts, to be subdued by him, or reduced under his dominion. Tho’ this is not to be taken in a literal sense, for there is no animal without the fear or beyond the reach of the power of man, we are to understand this as applicable to animals possessed of strength and size so superlative as that in these qualities other beasts bear no proportion to them.

The behemoth, then, I take to be the elephant; his history is well known, and my only business is with the reem, which I suppose to be the rhinoceros. The derivation of this word, both in the Hebrew and the Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness, or standing straight. This is certainly no particular quality in the animal itself, who is not more, or even so much erect as many other quadrupeds, for, in its knees it is rather crooked; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some degree of parallelizm, with his nose, or os frontis. The horn of the rhinoceros alone is erect and perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at right angles, thereby possessing a greater purchase, or power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in any other position.

This situation of the horn is very happily alluded to in the sacred writings: “My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn:” and the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, as I have already taken notice of in the course of my history, but was really an ornament, worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil, a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn.

Some authors, for what reason I know not, have made the reem, or unicorn, to be of the deer or antelope kind, that is, of a genus whose very character is fear and weakness, very opposite to the qualities by which the reem is described in scripture; besides, it is plain the reem is not of the class of clean quadrupeds; and a late modern traveller, very whimsically, takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. It is impossible to determine which is the silliest opinion of the two. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia, for they themselves were shepherds of that country, in a transport, from contemplating the strength of Israel whom he was brought to curse, says, they had as it were the strength of the reem. Job makes frequent allusion to his great strength, and ferocity, and indocility. He asks, Will the reem be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? that is, Will he willingly come into thy stable, and eat at thy manger? And again, Canst thou bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the vallies after thee? In other words, Canst thou make him go in the plow or harrows?

Isaiah, who of all the prophets seem to have known Egypt and Ethiopia the best, when prophecying about the destruction of Idumea, says, that the reem shall come down with the fat cattle; a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neighbourhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation of Egypt, he mentions as one manner of effecting it, the bringing down, the fly from Ethiopia to meet the cattle in the desert, and among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did not ordinarily come but on command, and where the cattle fled every year to save themselves from that insect.

The Rhinoceros, in Geez, is called Arwé Harish, and in the Amharic, Auraris, both which names signify the large wild beast with the horn. This would seem as if applied to the species that had but one horn. On the other hand, in the country of the Shangalla, and in Nubia adjoining, he is called Girnamgirn, or horn upon horn, and this would seem to denote that he had two. The Ethiopic text renders the word Reem, Arwé Harish, and this the Septuagint translates Monoceros, or Unicorn.

If the Abyssinian rhinoceros had invariably two horns, it seems to me improbable the Septuagint would call him Monoceros, especially as they must have seen an animal of this kind exposed at Alexandria in their time, then first mentioned in history, at an exhibition given by Ptolemy Philadelphus at his accession to the crown, before the death of his father, of which we have already made mention.

The principal reason of translating the word Reem, Unicorn, and not Rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that he must have had but one horn. But this is by no means so well-founded, as to be admitted as the only argument for establishing the existence of an animal which never has appeared, after the search of so many ages. Scripture speaks of the horns of the unicorn, so that, even from this circumstance, the reem may be the rhinoceros, as the Asiatic, and part of the African rhinoceros, may be the unicorn. It is something remarkable, that, notwithstanding Alexander’s expedition into India, this quadruped was not known to Aristotle. Strabo and Athenæus both speak of him from report, as having been seen in Egypt. Pausanius calls him an Ethiopic bull; the same manner the Romans called the elephants Lucas bovis, Lucanian oxen, as being first seen in that part of Magna Grecia. Pompey exhibited him first in Italy, and he was often produced in games as low as Heliogabalus.

As all these were from Asia, it seems most probable they had but one horn, and they are represented as such in the medals of Domitian. Yet Martial speaks of one with two horns; and the reality of the rhinoceros so armed being till now uncertain, commentators have taken pains to persuade us that this was an error of the poet; but there can be now no doubt that the poet was right, and the commentators wrong, a case that often happens.

I do not know from what authority the author of the Encyclopedia refers to the medals of Domitian, where the rhinoceros, he says, has a double horn; in all those that have been published, one horn only is figured. The use made of these horns is in the turning-loom; they are made into cups, and sold to ignorant people as containing antidotes against poisons; for this quality they generally make part of the presents of the Mogul and kings of Persia at Constantinople. Some modern naturalists have scarce yet given over this prejudice; which might have had a possibility of truth while the Galenical school flourished, and vegetable poisons were chiefly used; but it is absurd to suppose, that what might discover solanum, or deadly night-shade, upon contact, would have the like effect upon the application of arsenic; and from experience I can pronounce, that a cup of this is alike useless in the discovery or either. The handles of daggers are always, in Abyssinia, made of this horn, and these being the only works to which they are applied, is one of the reasons why I have said we should not rashly pronounce that the Asiatic rhinoceros has but one horn, merely because the foremost, or round horn, is the only one of the many that have been sent from India. In Abyssinia we seldom see the hunters at the pains to cut off or bring to market the second horn of the rhinoceros they have slain, because, being flat, in place of round, it has not diameter or substance enough to serve for the uses just spoken of; so that the round horn is the only one that appears either at Gondar or Cairo; and if we were to judge from this circumstance, the African rhinoceros is unicorn for the same reason as we do the Asiatic. The horns of this animal are hard and solid, of a reddish brown on the outside, a yellow inclining to gold within, and the heart a spot of black, which occupies the space of near two inches where the diameter of the horn is five. The surface takes a perfect polish, but when dried is very liable to splinter and crack. It likewise warps with heat, and scratches easily. And this was the reason that, though exceeding beautiful when new, it never would endure any time when made into the form of a snuff-box, but warped and split with the heat of the pocket, though this I believe was chiefly owing to the lamina, or flat pieces into which it was cut, being always left too thin. The foremost of these horns crook inward at the point, but by no means with so sudden a curve as is represented by the Count de Buffon. How sensible the animal is in this part, may be known from the accident I was eye-witness to in hunting him at Tcherkin, where a musquet-ball breaking off a point of that horn, gave him such a shock, as to deprive him for an instant of all appearance of life. Behind the foremost, or crooked horn, is the flat straight one, and again immediately behind that I have seen distinctly the rudiments of a third, and the horn full an inch long. If we may judge by its base, it would seem this third horn was intended to be as long as the other two.