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.
