Cosmas,[289] surnamed Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria, who lived in the sixth century, and made a voyage to India, and subsequently wrote works on cosmography, gives a figure of the unicorn, not, as he says, from actual sight of it, but reproduced from four figures of it in brass contained in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report, that “it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound.” It is noteworthy that this mode of escape is attributed, at the present day, to both the musk ox and the Ovis Ammon.
Marco Polo may or may not indicate a rhinoceros in the passage, “Après avoir descendu ces deux journées et demie, on trouve une province au midi qui est sur les confins de l’Inde, on l’appelle Amien—on marche quinze journées par des lieux desertes et par de grands bois où il y a beaucoup d’éléphants et de licornes et d’autres bêtes sauvages. Il n’y a ni hommes ni habitations aussi, nous laisserons ce lieu.”
But no such inference can be attached to the descriptions of the Ethiopian unicorn by Leo and Ludolphus.
The first says:[290]
“The unicorn is found in the mountains of high Ethiopia. It is of an ash colour and resembles a colt of two years old, excepting that it has the head of a goat, and in the middle of its forehead a horn three feet long, which is smooth and white like ivory, and has yellow streaks running along from top to bottom.
“This horn is an antidote against poison, and it is reported that other animals delay drinking till it has soaked its horn in the water to purify it. This animal is so nimble that it can neither be killed nor taken. But it casts its horn like a stag, and the hunters find it in the deserts. But the truth of this is called in question by some authors.”
Ludolphus[291] says:
“Here is also another beast, called arucharis, with one horn, fierce and strong, of which unicorn several have been seen feeding in the woods.”
Coming down to later days we find the unicorn described by Lewes Vertomannus[292]—he who, having visited, among other places, the site of the legend of St. George and the Dragon,[293] and undergone a variety of adventures, visits, in the course of them, the temple of Mecca, and, as follows, gives a description “of the unicorns of the Temple of Mecha, which are not seen in any other place.”
“On the other part of the temple are parks or places enclosed, where are seen two unicorns, named of the Greeks monocerotæ, and are there showed to the people for a miracle, and not without good reason, for the seldomness and strange nature. The one of them, which is much higher than the other, yet not much unlike to a colt of thirty months of age; in the forehead groweth only one horn, in manner right foorth, of the length of three cubits. The other is much younger, of the age of one year, and like a young colt; the horn of this is of the length of four handfulls.