The most interesting of these travellers in Ethiopia was the Jesuit missionary Jeronimo Lobo (1593-1678). After sailing round the Cape in 1622 and spending some time in the Portuguese colonies of India he went to Abyssinia, the Negus Segued having recently been converted by the Jesuit Pedro Paez. There he spent several years in the district of Damute, where both he and John Bermudea place the unicorn, but in 1632 the Negus fell into heresy and banished all the Jesuit fathers. Lobo was captured by the Turks and sent to Goa to secure ransom money, after which he tried to get the Portuguese viceroy to declare war on Segued with the object of bringing him back to orthodoxy by force of arms. Failing at Goa, Lobo sailed for home, was wrecked and captured by pirates on the way, and laid the grievances of the Christian faith–mingled, perhaps, with others of a more private sort–before the Courts of Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome without avail. Disgusted by this irreligious pacifism, he returned to India and rose to high office in his Order. His last days were spent in Portugal.
Lobo left two accounts of Abyssinia, one of which was translated into French from the unpublished manuscript and out of the French into English by Samuel Johnson in his Grub Street years. This familiar book contains the following passage: “In the Province of Agaus has been seen the Unicorn, that Beast so much talk’d of and so little known; the prodigious Swiftness with which this Creature runs from one Wood into another has given me no Opportunity of examining it particularly, yet I have had so near a sight of it as to be able to give some Description of it. The Shape is the same as that of a beautiful Horse, exact and nicely proportion’d, of a Bay Colour, with a black Tail, which in some Provinces is long, in others very short; some have long Manes hanging to the Ground. They are so Timerous that they never Feed but surrounded with other Beasts that defend them.”
It is pleasant to have this passage in Johnson’s phraseology, and one would like to know what the man who kept an open mind about the Cock Lane Ghost thought concerning the unicorn. His Dictionary, I think, forbids us to include him among the believers, but in his Preface to the Lobo translation he says that whatever the Jesuit relates, “whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability has a right to demand that they should believe him who cannot contradict him. He appears to have described things as he saw them, to have copied Nature from the Life, and to have consulted his Senses, not his Imagination.”
One is glad to recall Johnson’s measured assertion while considering Father Lobo’s second passage on this topic, which appears in A Short Relation of the River Nile, edited, or perhaps one may say written, in 1669 by Sir Peter Wyche. The contents of this book are: “A Short Relation of the River Nile; The True Cause of the River Nile Overflowing; Of the Famous Unicorn:–where He is Bred and how Shaped; The Reason why the Abyssine Emperor is Called Prester John of the Indies; A Short Tract of the Red Sea; A Discourse of Palm-Trees.” All of this is obviously delectable matter,but the best chapter is that concerning “The Unicorn, the most celebrated among Beasts, as among Birds are the Phoenix, the Pelican, and the Bird of Paradise”. This animal is “of the more credit because mentioned in holy Scriptures, compared to many things, even to God made man. None of the Authors who speak of the Unicorn discourse of his birth or Country, satisfied with the deserved eulogiums by which he is celebrated. That secret was reserved for those who travelled and surveyed many countries . . . . The country of the Unicorn (an African creature, only known there) is the Province of Agaos in the kingdom of Damotes; that it may wander into places more remote is not improbable . . . . A Father, my companion, who spent some time in this province, upon notice that this so famous animal was there, used all diligence to procure one. The natives brought him a very young colt, so tender as in a few days it died. A Portuguese Captain, a person of years and credit, told me that returning once from the army with twenty other Portuguese soldiers in company they one morning rested in a little valley encompassed with thick woods, designing to breakfast while their horses grazed on the good grass. Scarce were they sat down when from the thickest part of the wood lightly sprang a perfect horse of the same colour, hair, and shape before described. His career was so brisk and wanton that he took no notice of those new inmates till engaged among them; then, as frightened at what he had seen, suddenly started back again, yet left the spectators sufficient time to see and observe at their pleasure. The particular survey of these parts seized them with delight and admiration. One of his singularities was a beautiful strait horn on his forehead. He appeared to run about with his eyes full of fear. Our horses seemed to allow him for one of the same brood, curvetted and made towards him. The soldiers, observing him in less than musket shot, not able to shoot, their muskets being unfixt, endeavoured to encompass him, out of an assurance that that was the famous unicorn; but he prevented them, for, perceiving them, with the same violent career he recovered the wood, leaving the Portuguese satisfied in the truth of such an animal. My knowledge of this captain makes the truth with me undoubted. In another place of the same province (the most remote, craggy, and mountainous part, called Manina) the same beast hath been often seen grazing amongst others of different kinds . . . . To this place of banishment a tyrannical Emperor name Adamas Segued sent without any cause divers Portuguese, who from the top of these mountains saw the unicornes grazing in the plains below, the distance not greater than allowed them so distinct an observation as they knew him, like a beautiful Gennet, with a fair horn in his forehead.”
More scholarly than any of these writings is the New History of Ethiopia by Job Ludolphus, which appeared in English in 1682. Here one finds a description of a beast “both Strong and Fierce, call’d Arweharis . . . which signifies one Horn. This beast resembles a goat, but very swift of foot. Whether it be the Monoceros of the Ancients I leave to the scrutinie of others . . . . However, the Portugals tell us that the report was not altogether vain, for one of them was seen by John Gabriel in the province of the Agawi in the kingdom of Damota . . . . The description of the Portugueses seems most agreeable to Truth.”
Robert Frampton, later Bishop of Gloucester, spent several years of his early life during the middle of the seventeenth century in the Orient, and while there he once met “a great officer of that country they call Ethiopia”. This officer told him that “the most remarkable beast they had there was the Unicorn, which, though very wild and rarely taken, he had often seen, and described just as we paint him. And the man being utterly unacquainted with the European fancy made it, if not probable, at least possible that such a beast there might be, though in that little frequented country, not well known by us, it might escape the notice of those few that had been there.”
In October 1652 there arrived in Copenhagen an “African legate” by the name of Franciscus Marchio de Magellanes. He was much impressed by the alicorn in the royal museum, especially because it was so different from the horn of the unicorn that was familiar to him in his own land. This horn, he said, came from the Tire Bina, a very fleet and wild beast about the size and shape of a small horse, which lived in the African desert. Shaggy about the head and legs and feet, the animal had a short mane and a tail like that of a horse, but not very full. Its hide, smooth and with very short hairs, was ashen in hue above, with a black line running along its back, and white from the lower jaw to the abdomen. There was a small bundle of hairs on the brow from the midst of which there sprang a single horn to which the hairs adhered. This horn, barely three spans in length, had not the spiral striae seen in European alicorns, but small protuberances running in a straight line from the base to the point. It was of a golden hue and hollow at the root. On the point of this horn there was another bundle of hairs, as large as a man’s fist and reddish. The Africans made much of this horn, using it both internally and externally against poison. The legate told his friends in Copenhagen that the Tire Bina always dipped the horn in the water before he drank of it, and that as soon as he did this the water was greatly agitated. The inhabitants were accustomed to dip the horn in their drinking-water in the belief that this made it more healthful. They also used the animal’s flesh and the burned hairs of its tail as drugs.
These reports of the Ethiopian and African unicorn, buried as most of them were in books that were seldom read, made little impression in northern Europe. In 1625 Purchas felt obliged to say: “As for the Unicorne, none hath beene seene these hundred yeares last past, by testimony of any probable Author (for Webb, which said he saw them in Prester John’s Court, is a mere fabler.)” James Primerose, thirteen years later, thought that although the animal was certainly not fictitious it must be excessively rare. Aidrovandus said in 1639 that in spite of the fact that almost the whole surface of the globe had been explored hardly any man dared to affirm that he had seen the unicorn. John Ogilby, the bookseller-poet, by no means so ridiculous a person as Dryden and Pope managed to make him appear, shows in his Africa that his faith is slight. After the middle of the seventeenth century, however, there was a decided tendency, somewhat difficult to explain, toward belief. This is clearly seen in Antony Deussing’s monograph on the unicorn and in all the other academic dissertations; but in these the “will to believe” is obviously actuated by fear of the effect that doubt of the unicorn would have upon faith in the Bible.
[Click next page to continue]