Part 13

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 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 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.

London Published Dec^r. 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.]

JERBOA.

I have already observed that the Arabs have confounded the Saphan with several other animals that have no sort of resemblance to it; there are two of these very remarkable, the Fennec and Jerboa, of which I am now to treat. As I have given excellent figures of both, by drawings taken from the creatures alive, I have no doubt I shall prevent any confusion for the future, and throw some light upon sacred scripture, the greatest profit and use that can result from this sort of writing.

If the rabbit has been frequently confounded with the saphan, and stood for it in the interpretation of the Hebrew text, the same has likewise happened to another animal, the Jerboa, still more dissimilar in form and in manners from the saphan, than even the rabbit itself, and much less known. The Jerboa is a small harmless animal of the desert, nearly the size of a common rat: the skin very smooth and shining, of a brown tinged with yellow or gold colour, and the ends of the hairs tipt with black. It lives in the smoothest plains or places of the desert, especially where the soil is fixed gravel, for in that chiefly it burrows, dividing its hole below into many mansions. It seems to be apprehensive of the falling in of the ground; it therefore generally digs its hole under the root of some spurge, thyme, or absinthium, upon whose root it seems to depend for its roof not falling in and burying it in the ruins of its subterraneous habitation. It seems to delight most in those places that are haunted by the cerastes, or horned viper. Nature has certainly imposed this dangerous neighbourhood upon the one for the good and advantage of the other, and that of mankind in general. Of the many trials I made, I never found a Jerboa in the body of a viper, excepting once in that of a female big with young, and the Jerboa itself was then nearly consumed.

The Jerboa, for the most part, stands upon his hind-legs; he rests himself by sitting backwards sometimes, and I have seen him, though rarely, as it were lie upon all four; whether that is from fatigue or sickness, or whether it is a natural posture, I know not. The Jerboa of the Cyrenaicum is six inches and a quarter in length, as he stands in the drawing. He would be full half an inch more if he was laid straight at his length immediately after death. The head, from his nose to the occiput, is one inch two lines. From the nose to the foremost angle of the eye, six lines. The opening of the eye itself is two lines and a quarter; his ears three quarters of an inch in length, and a quarter of an inch in breadth; they are smooth, and have no hair within, and but very little without; of an equal breadth from bottom to top, do not diminish to a point, but are rounded there. The buttocks are marked with a semicircle of black, which parts from the root of the tail, and ends at the top of the thigh. This gives it the air of a compound animal, a rat with bird’s legs, to which the flying posture still adds resemblance. From this stroke to the center of the eye is three inches, and to the point of his toe the same measure; his tail is six inches and a quarter long, seems aukwardly set on, as stuck between his buttocks, without any connection with his spine; half of it is poorly covered with hair of a light or whiter colour than his body; the other half is a beautiful feather of long hair, the middle white, the edges jet black: this tail, which by its length would seem an incumbrance to him, is of a surprising advantage in guiding and directing him in his jumping.

From the shoulder to the elbow of the fore-foot is half an inch: from the elbow to the joining of the paw, 5/8ths of an inch. The claw itself is curved, and is something less than a quarter of an inch. It has very long mustachoes, some of them standing backward, and some of them forward from his nose; they are all of unequal lengths, the longest an inch and a half; his belly is white: he seems to be of a very cleanly nature, his hair always in great order. From his snout to the back part of the opening of the mouth is half an inch; his nose projects beyond his under jaw three quarters of an inch. He has four toes in his hind-foot, and a small one behind his heel, where is a tuft of hair coloured black. The fore-foot hath three toes only.

The ancients have early described this animal; we see him in some of the first medals of the Cyrenaicum, sitting under an umbellated plant, supposed to be the silphium, whose figure is preserved to us on the silver medals of Cyrene. The high price set upon it is mentioned by several historians, but the reason of that value, or the use of the plant, I have never yet been able to comprehend. I suppose it was an adventitious plant, which the curiosity and correspondence of the princes of that state had probably brought from some part of Negroland, where the goats are brousing upon it at this day with indifference enough, unconscious of the price it bore in the time of the Ptolemies.

Herodotus, Theophrastus, and Aristotle, all mention this animal under the name of διπους, γαλαι διποδες or, two-footed rats. This animal is found in most of the parts of Arabia and Syria, in every part of the southern deserts of Africa, but no where so frequently, and in such numbers, as in the Cyrenaicum, or Pentapolis. In my unfortunate journey there, I employed the Arabs, together with my servants, to kill a number with sticks, so as that the skins might not be injured by shot. I got them dressed in Syria and in Greece, and sewed together, making use of the tail as in ermine for the lining of a cloak, and they had a very good effect; the longer they wore, the glossier and finer appearance the skins made. The Jerboa is very fat and well-coloured; the buttocks, thighs, and part of the back, are roasted and ate by the Arabs. I have eaten them; they are not distinguishable from a young rabbit either in colour or taste; they have not even the strong taste the rabbit has. Some writers have confounded these two animals together; at least they have mistaken this for the saphan, and the saphan for the rabbit. This, however, is plainly without foundation. These long legs, and the necessity of leaping, demand the plain ground, where nature has always placed this creature.

The Arabs Ibn Bitar, Algiahid, Alcamus, and Damir, and many others, have known the animal perfectly, though some of them seem to confound it with another called the Ashkoko. Ibnalgiauzi says, that the Jerboa is the only kind that builds in rocks, which from ten thousand examples I am sure he does not, nor is he any way made for it, and I am very certain he is not gregarious. They have a number of holes indeed in the same place, but I do not remember ever to have seen more than two together at a time. The Arab Canonists are divided whether or not he can be lawfully eaten. Ibnalgiauzi is of opinion he cannot, nor any other animal living under the ground, excepting the land crocodile, which he calls El Dabb, a large lizard, said to be useful in venereal pursuits, Ata and Achmet, Benhantal, and several others, expressly say, that the eating of the Jerboa is lawful. But this seems to be an indulgence, as we read in Damir, that the use of this animal is granted because the Arabs delight in it. And Ibn Bitar says, that the Jerboa is called Israelitish, that the flesh of it is dried in the outward air, is very nourishing, and prevents costiveness, from which we should apprehend, that medicinal considerations entered into this permission likewise. However this may be, it seems to me plain, such was not the opinion of the old translators of the Arab version from the Hebrew; they once only name this animal expressly, and there they say it is forbidden. The passage is in Isaiah, “They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.” The Hebrew word signifies mouse, and so our English translation renders it. But the Arabic version calls it expressly the Jerboa, and classes it with the abomination and swine’s flesh, that is, in the class of things in the highest degree forbidden.