Rhinoceros of Africa.
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.