With The Blood Of These Serpents, Mixed Up With The
Seeds Of A Certain Tree, He Infected His Weapons With So Deadly A Poison,
That, If They Drew But The Least Drop Of Blood, The Person Or Animal
Wounded By Them Was Sure To Die In A Quarter Of An Hour.
Bisboror farther
offered to shew him an example of the efficacy of this art, but the
Genoese declined witnessing the experiment.
This story of the serpents is
the more probable, that I have heard of persons in Italy who could charm
them in a similar manner; but I am apt to believe that the Negroes are
the most expert sorcerers in the world.
The only tame animals in the kingdom of Senegal are oxen, cows, and goats;
having no sheep, which love a temperate or cold air, and could not live
in this hot climate. Nature, however, has provided mankind with
necessaries fitted for their various occasions; having furnished the
Europeans with wool, as they have need of warm clothing, while the
Negroes, who live in such intense heat, have been supplied with cotton by
the Almighty. Owing to the heat, in my opinion, the cattle of this
country are much smaller than those of Italy. It is a great rarity to see
a red cow in this country, as they are all black or white, or mottled
with black and white spots. Beasts of prey, such as lions, leopards, and
wolves, are numerous, and there are plenty of hares. Wild elephants go
about in troops, like the wild swine in Italy, but can never be tamed, as
they are in other parts of the world. As the elephant is a well-known
animal, I shall only observe in general, that those of Africa are of a
very large size, as may be easily conceived by the size of their teeth,
which are imported into Europe. Of these large teeth, or tusks rather,
each elephant has two in the lower jaw, the points of which turn down,
whereas those of the wild boar are turned up. Before my voyage to Africa
I had been told that the elephant could not bend its knee, and slept
standing; but this is an egregious falsehood for the bending of their
knees can be plainly perceived when they walk, and they, certainly lie
down and rise again like other animals. They never shed their large teeth
before death; neither do they do any harm to man unless provoked. In that
case the elephant makes his attack with his trunk, which is a kind of
nose, protruded to a great length. He can contract and extend this
proboscis at pleasure, and is able to toss a man with it as far as a
sling can throw a stone. It is in vain to think of escape by running, let
the person be ever so swift, in case the elephant pursues in earnest, as
his strides are of prodigious length. They are more dangerous when they
have young ones in their company than at any other time; of which the
females have only, three or four at a birth.
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