452

CHAP.
XV.

COUNTRIES OF WILD BEASTS.

Hippopotamus-is found in Senegal*, Abyssinia, Dongola, Dar-Fur, Bornou†, and many parts of southern Africa. Also in the Nile in upper Egypt: sometimes in lower Egypt. Two were killed near Damietta, A. D. 1600. They are not known to inhabit Asia. In a French translation of Pallas, Vol. V. p. 204, the walrus is named Hippopotamus.-See Ch. XVI. of this Vol.

Ostriches.-Numidia, Dar-Fur, Bornou, and numerous other places. Tigers.-Senegal §, Hindostan, Chinese Tartary, the Altai mountains, and many other parts of Asia||.

Lions, Leopards, Panthers.-India, Persia, Abyssinia, Bornou, Morocco, Dar-Fur, and many other parts of Africa and Asia.

Buffaloes-are found in most parts of India, and many parts of Asia and Africa. In Pegu they are of a monstrous size**.

Hyenas.-Hindostan, Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Barbary, Abyssinia, Dar-Fur, &c.

Asses.-Plentiful in Persia and Armenia++.

Zebras.-Congo, Abyssinia, and other parts of Africa‡‡.

* Adanson.

+ The river Shary empties itself by two branches into the lake Tsad. Crocodiles were basking on the banks, fish and water fowl abounded, and the huge hippopotami came so near as to be struck with the paddles.-Quarterly Review, LXII. March 1825.

Rees's Cyc. "Hip." Bruce, Vol. V. p. 85.

§ Adanson. "What are called Tigers, in Morocco, are leopards. The royal tiger is there unknown."-Chenier, Vol. I. p. 171. The first tigers seen by the Romans, were those presented by the Indian ambassadors to Augustus, while he was at Samos.-See Crevier, "Augustus." This may be deemed a proof that tigers are not known in Africa.

|| Leopards, panthers, &c. are frequently called tigers by travellers.

** Purchas, Vol. I.

P.
566. B.

++ Xenophon, Exp. of Cyrus, p. 27; and Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, with an engraving of one.

Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. VI. p. 185. Lobo, Vol. 1. p. 291. Rees's Cyc.

REEM.-UNICORN.-CAMELOPARD.

Camelopards. Siam in Asia*, Senegal, Abyssina, Bornou, DarFur, the Cape of Good Hope, and other parts of Africa. The Reem, translated in the book of Job unicorn, is most probably the camelopard, which must have been known to Job. Bruce remarks that Reem, in the Hebrew and Ethiopic, is derived from erectness, or standing straight; and he supposes that it alludes to the upright position of the horn, as the rhinoceros has bending knees. The commentators on Job, Chapter XXXIX. and on Numbers, Ch. XXIII. v. 22, think that the original means wild bull, goat, antelope, &c. The camelopard was probably not known to the translators; it is but recently that it has been accurately known. Heliodorus speaks of the camelopard being brought, among other presents, by the Ethiopian ambassadors to Rome. They were often exhibited at the games after Egypt belonged to the Romans.

Bears were found in perhaps every part of the continent of Europe, and also in Africa and Asia. Bears' flesh was much esteemed by the ancients as food, and is still served up at the tables of princes. The Emperor of China will send a hundred leagues to procure bears for an entertainment. The fur has always been valuable. The Ursarii were servants in great families among the Romans, who had the care of breeding and feeding these animals. The English nobility had officers of this kind: the fifth earl of Northumberland paid one of them a salary of twenty shillingst. In early times it is not improbable that bears were fed and bred by the barbarous nations of Germany as ordinary food.

* Vincent Le Blanc, p. 115. As I have not met with any other authority, I venture to conjecture, that those mentioned by Le Blanc had been imported from Africa, for the parks of the sovereigns.

+ Rees's Cyc. "Bear's flesh," and "Bear wards." The Romans exhibited Numidian bears. See Beloe's Herodotus, Melpomene, CXCI. and note 188; and Ch. XI. of this Vol.

453

CHAP.

XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

On the Fisheries in the Arctic Seas, of the Walrus, (the Mammoth of Siberia), and the Narwal. Surprising numbers of these Animals.-Description of the Walrus by the Emperor

Kang-hi.

XVI.

THE WALRUS.

CHAP. THE Trichechus Rosmarus is generally known by the names, walrus, morse, morsch, sea-horse. It is sometimes called sea-lion, seaox, horse-whale, and sea-elephant. By the Samoyedes it is named Tiute*. By the eastern and other Siberians, Behemot+ and Mammoth‡.

• Tooke's Russian Empire, Vol. III. p. 91.

+ Muschkin Puschkin, Vaivode of Smolensko, and Intendant of the Chancery of the government of Siberia, A. D. 1685.-Vide Father Avril's Travels, p. 176.

"The Russian Mammoth certainly came from the word Behemot. It is currently believed by the Siberian populace, that mammoths were amphibious creatures."-Strahlenberg, p. 404. "The Russians drive a great trade to Pekin in the teeth of a sort of fish, which are much finer, whiter, and more precious than ivory.”—Du Halde, Vol. II. p. 263. A note at the bottom of the page adds, “they are those called mammut's teeth, found lately to be teeth of elephants." This note was probably added by the translator. "A great many mammoths' teeth, which are white, are carried for sale to China."-Strahlenberg, p. 402.