There are few animals, whose history has passed under the consideration of naturalists, that have given occasion to so much confusion and equivocation as the HyÆna has done. It began very early among the ancients, and the moderns have fully contributed their share. It is not my intention to take up the reader’s time with discussing the errors of others, whether ancient or modern. Without displaying a great deal of learning to tell him what it is not, I shall content myself with informing him what it is, by a good figure and distinct relation of what in his history hath been unknown, or omitted, and put it in the reader’s power to reject any of the pretended HyÆnas that authors or travellers should endeavour to impose upon him. At the same time, I shall submit to his decision, whether the animal I mention is a new one, or only a variety of the old, as it must on all hands be allowed that he is as yet undescribed.

Most of the animals confounded with him are about six times smaller than he is, and some there are that do not even use their four legs, but only two. The want of a critical knowledge in the Arabic language, and of natural history at the same time, has in some measure been the occasion of this among the moderns. Bochart46 discusses the several errors of the ancients with great judgment, and the Count de Buffon47, in a very elegant and pleasant manner, hath nearly exhausted the whole.

I do not think there is any one that hath hitherto written of this animal who ever saw the thousandth part of them that I have. They were a plague in Abyssinia in every situation, both in the city and in the field, and I think surpassed the sheep in number. Gondar was full of them from the time it turned dark till the dawn of day, seeking the different pieces of slaughtered carcases which this cruel and unclean people expose in the streets without burial, and who firmly believe that these animals are Falasha from the neighbouring mountains, transformed by magic, and come down to eat human flesh in the dark in safety. Many a time in the night, when the king had kept me late in the palace, and it was not my duty to lie there, in going across the square from the king’s house, not many hundred yards distant, I have been apprehensive they would bite me in the leg. They grunted in great numbers about me, though I was surrounded with several armed men, who seldom passed a night without wounding or slaughtering some of them.

One night in Maitsha, being very intent on observation, I heard something pass behind me towards the bed, but upon looking round could perceive nothing. Having finished what I was then about, I went out of my tent, resolving directly to return, which I immediately did, when I perceived large blue eyes glaring at me in the dark. I called upon my servant with a light, and there was the hyÆna standing nigh the head of the bed, with two or three large bunches of candles in his mouth. To have fired at him I was in danger of breaking my quadrant or other furniture, and he seemed, by keeping the candles steadily in his mouth, to wish for no other prey at that time. As his mouth was full, and he had no claws to tear with, I was not afraid of him, but with a pike struck him as near the heart as I could judge. It was not till then he shewed any sign of fierceness; but, upon feeling his wound, he let drop the candles, and endeavoured to run up the shaft of the spear to arrive at me, so that, in self defence, I was obliged to draw out a pistol from my girdle and shoot him, and nearly at the same time my servant cleft his skull with a battle-ax. In a word, the hyÆna was the plague of our lives, the terror of our night-walks, the destruction of our mules and asses, which above all others are his favourite food. Many instances of this the reader will meet with throughout my Travels.

The hyÆna is known by two names in the east, Deeb and Dubbah. His proper name is Dubbah, and this is the name he goes by among the best Arabian naturalists. In Abyssinia, Nubia, and part of Arabia, he is, both in writing and conversation, called Deeb, or Deep, either ending with a b or p; and here the confusion begins, for though Dubbah is properly a hyÆna, Dabbu is a species of monkey; and though Deeb is likewise a hyÆna, the same word signifies a jackal; and a jackal being by naturalists called a wolf, Deeb is understood to be a wolf also. In Algiers this difference is preserved strictly; Dubbah is the hyÆna; Deeb is the jackal, which run in flocks in the night, crying like hounds. Dubb is a bear, so here is another confusion, and the bear is taken for the hyÆna, because Dubb, or Dubbah, seems to be the same word. So Poncet, on the frontiers of Sennaar, complains, that one of his mules was bit in the thigh by a bear, though it is well known there never was any animal of the bear-kind in that, or, I believe, in any other part of Africa. And I strongly apprehend, that the leopards and tigers, which Alvarez and Don Roderigo de Lima mention molested them so much in their journey to Shoa, were nothing else but hyÆnas. For tigers there are certainly none in Abyssinia; it is an Asiatic animal. Though there are leopards, yet they are but few in number, and are not gregarious, neither, indeed, are the hyÆnas, only as they gather in flocks, lured by the smell of their food; and of these it would seem there are many in Shoa, for the capital of that province, called Tegulat, means the City of the HyÆna.

If the description given by M. de Buffon is an elegant and good one, the draught of the animal is no less so. It is exactly the same creature I have seen on Mount Libanus and at Aleppo, which makes me have the less doubt that there are two species of this animal, the one partaking more of the dog, which is the animal I am now describing, the other more of the nature of the hog, which is the hyÆna of M. de Buffon. Of this the reader will be easily satisfied, by comparing the two figures and the measures of them. The same distinction there is in the badger.

The animal from which this was drawn was slain at Teawa, and was the largest I had ever seen, being five feet nine inches in length, measuring from his nose to his anus; whereas the hyÆna exhibited by M. de Buffon was not half that, it being only three feet two inches nine lines in length. Notwithstanding the great superiority in size by which the hyÆna of Atbara exceeded that of M. de Buffon, I did not think him remarkable for his fatness, or that he owed any of his size to his being at that time in more than ordinary keeping; on the contrary, I thought the most of those I had before seen were in a better habit of body. As near as I could guess, he might weigh about 8 stone, horseman’s weight, that is, 14 pound to the stone, or 112 pound.

The length of his tail, from the longest hair in it to its insertion above the anus, was one foot nine inches. It was composed of strong hair of a reddish, brown colour, without any rings or bands of blackness upon the points. In the same manner, the mane consisted of hairs exactly similar both in colour and substance, being longer as they approached the neck, where they were about seven inches long; and though it was obvious that, upon being irritated, he could raise them upon his back, yet they were not rigid enough, and were too long to have the resistance of bristles of the hog or boar. This mane reached above two inches beyond the occiput between his ears, but then turned short, and ended there.

From the occiput to his nose he was one foot three inches and a half. The length of the nose, from the bottom of the forehead, was five inches and a half, in shape much like that of a dog, the whole head, indeed, more so than that of the wolf or any other creature. The aperture of the eye was two inches nearly; that of the mouth, when not gaping or snarling, about four inches and a half. The ear, from its base to its extreme point, was nine inches and a quarter; it was mostly bare, or covered with very thin, short hair. From the inside of one ear to that of the other, measured across the forehead, was seven inches and a half. From the edge of the opening of one eye to that of the other, measured in the same manner, it was three inches nearly. From the sole of the fore-foot, as it stood on the ground, to the top of the back above the shoulder, it was three feet seven inches; but his back was smooth and plain, not rising or curved as the hyÆna of M. de Buffon appears to have been. The fore-leg was two feet in length, the foot flat, and four inches broad. From the sole of the foot to the middle of the fore joint was six inches and a half, and this joint seemed to be ill-made, and as it were crooked and half bent. He has four toes, and a straight nail between each of them, greatly resembling that of a dog, strong and black, but by no means calculated for tearing animals, and as little for digging, by which occupation he is said chiefly to get his food.

He stands ill upon his hind-legs, nor can his measure there be marked with precision. It is observable in all hyÆnas, that when they are first dislodged from cover, or obliged to run, they limp so remarkably that it would appear the hind-leg was broken, and this has often deceived me; but, after they have continued to run some time, this affection goes entirely away, and they move very swiftly. To what this is owing it is impossible for me to say. I expected to have found something likely to be the origin of it in the dissection of this animal given by M. de Buffon, but no such thing appears, and I fear it is in vain to look for it elsewhere.

I apprehend from the sole of his hind-foot to the joining of the thigh at his belly, was nearer two feet seven inches than any other measure. The belly is covered with hair very little softer and shorter than that of his back. It grows shorter as it approaches his hind-legs. His colour is of a yellowish brown, the head and ears the lightest part of him. The legs are marked thick with black bands which begin at the lower hinder joint, then continue very dark in colour till the top of the thigh, where they turn broad and circular, reaching across the whole side. Over the shoulder are two semicircular bands likewise, then come very frequent bands down the outside of the fore-leg in the same manner as the hind. The inside of all his legs are without marks, so are the neck, head, and ears, but a little above the thorax is a large black streak which goes up along the throat, and down to the point of the lower jaw. His nose is black, and above the point, for some inches, is of a dark colour also.

The HyÆna is one of those animals which commentators have taken for the Saphan, without any probability whatever, further than he lives in caves, whither he retires in the summer to avoid being tormented with flies. Clement48 of Alexandria introduces Moses saying, You shall not eat the hare, nor the hyÆna, as he interprets the word saphan; but the HyÆna does not chew the cud; they are not, as I say, gregarious, though they troop together upon the smell of food. We have no reason to attribute extraordinary wisdom to him; he is on the contrary brutish, indolent, slovenly, and impudent, and seems to possess much the manners of the wolf. His courage appears to proceed from an insatiable appetite, and has nothing of the brave or generous in it, and he dies oftener flying than fighting; but least of all can it be said of him that he is a feeble folk, being one of the strongest beasts of the field.

Upon the most attentive consideration, the animal here represented seems to be of a different species from the hyÆna of M. de Buffon. This of Atbara seems to be a dog, whereas the first sight of the hyÆna of M. de Buffon gives the idea of a hog, and this is the impression it seems to have made upon the first travellers that describe him. Kempfer49 calls him Taxus Porcinus, and says he has bristles like a hog.

We have an example of variety of this sort in the badger. There is a sow of that kind, and a dog. The dog is carnivorous, and the sow lives upon vegetables, though both of them have been suspected at times to eat and devour animal food.

The hyÆna about Mount Libanus, Syria, the north of Asia, and also about Algiers, is known to live for the most part upon large succulent, bulbous roots, especially those of the fritillaria, and such large, fleshy, vegetable substances. I have known large spaces of fields turned up to get at onions or roots of those plants, and these were chosen with such care, that, after having been peeled, they have been refused and left on the ground for a small rotten spot being discovered in them. It will be observed the hyÆna has no claws either for seizing or separating animal food, that he might feed upon it, and I therefore imagine his primitive manner of living was rather upon vegetables than upon flesh, as it is certain he still continues his liking to the former; and I apprehend it is from an opportunity offering in a hungry time that he has ventured either upon man or beast, for few carnivorous animals, such as lions, tigers, and wolves, ever feed upon both.

As to the charge against him of his disturbing sepulchres, I fancy it is rather supposed from his being unable to seize his living prey that he is thought to attach himself to the dead. Upon much inquiry I never found one example fairly proved. The graves in the east are built over with mason-work; and though it is against the law of the Turks to repair these when they fall down, yet the body is probably consumed long before that happens; nor is the hyÆna provided with arms or weapons to attempt it in its entire state; and the large plants and flowers, with fleshy bulbous roots, are found generally in plenty among the graves.

But the hyÆna of Atbara seems long to have abandoned his primitive food of roots, if that was ever his, and to have gone largely and undeniably into the slaughter of living creatures, especially that of men. Indeed, happily for himself, he has adopted this succedaneum; for as to roots or fruit of any kind, they are not to be found in the desert country where he has chosen his domicil; and he has no difficulty from the sepulchres, because whole nations perish without one of them being buried. Add to this, that the depravity of human nature, the anarchy and bad government of the country, have given him greater opportunities than anywhere else in the world to obtain frequent and easy victories over man.

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.