In The Year 1615,
Rassela Christos, Lieutenant-General To Sultan Segued, Entered Those
Kingdoms With His Army In A Hostile Manner; But Being Able To Get No
Intelligence Of The Condition Of The People, And Astonished At Their
Unbounded Extent, He Returned, Without Daring To Attempt Anything.
As the empire of the Abyssins terminates at these deserts, and as I
have followed the course of the Nile no farther, I here leave it to
range over barbarous kingdoms, and convey wealth and plenty into
Egypt, which owes to the annual inundations of this river its envied
fertility.
I know not anything of the rest of its passage, but that
it receives great increases from many other rivers; that it has
several cataracts like the first already described, and that few
fish are to be found in it, which scarcity, doubtless, is to be
attributed to the river-horses and crocodiles, which destroy the
weaker inhabitants of these waters, and something may be allowed to
the cataracts, it being difficult for fish to fall so far without
being killed.
Although some who have travelled in Asia and Africa have given the
world their descriptions of crocodiles and hippopotamus, or river-
horse, yet as the Nile has at least as great numbers of each as any
river in the world, I cannot but think my account of it would be
imperfect without some particular mention of these animals.
The crocodile is very ugly, having no proportion between his length
and thickness; he hath short feet, a wide mouth, with two rows of
sharp teeth, standing wide from each other, a brown skin so
fortified with scales, even to his nose, that a musket-ball cannot
penetrate it. His sight is extremely quick, and at a great
distance. In the water he is daring and fierce, and will seize on
any that are so unfortunate as to be found by him bathing, who, if
they escape with life, are almost sure to leave some limb in his
mouth. Neither I, nor any with whom I have conversed about the
crocodile, have ever seen him weep, and therefore I take the liberty
of ranking all that hath been told us of his tears amongst the
fables which are only proper to amuse children.
The hippopotamus, or river-horse, grazes upon the land and browses
on the shrubs, yet is no less dangerous than the crocodile. He is
the size of an ox, of a brown colour without any hair, his tail is
short, his neck long, and his head of an enormous bigness; his eyes
are small, his mouth wide, with teeth half a foot long; he hath two
tusks like those of a wild boar, but larger; his legs are short, and
his feet part into four toes. It is easy to observe from this
description that he hath no resemblance of a horse, and indeed
nothing could give occasion to the name but some likeness in his
ears, and his neighing and snorting like a horse when he is provoked
or raises his head out of water.
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