Leguat, F., 1708. A new voyage to the East-Indies. London, R.Bonwicke and others, pp. 1-8, i-xv, 1-23, 1-248
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[186] Java
There are very fierce beasts in this island, such as the Rhinoceros and Tyger: these last are of a prodigious bigness.
[222] Cape of Good Hope
They have in this country a prodigious number of deer, many oxen, sheep, roe-bucks and apes. There are also elephants, rhinoceros’s, elks, lions, tigres, leopards, wild-boars, antilopes, porcupines, horses, asses, dogs and wild-cats.
[223]
As for the Unicorn there is no such sort of beast. The old and most curious inhabitants of the Cape, are well satisfy’d with it, and he that made Caesar’s Commentaries was a lyar, as well as the rest. The rhinoceros is the true four-footed unicorn, for there are fish, birds, and some insects, that have likewise but one horn. I could heartily wish to have seen one of these rhinoceros’s, by reason of the many fables that are told of that beast, as well as of the crocodiles, and a hundred other animals. My friends that had seen of them, laugh’d at all the figures the painters gave of them, and which are here subjoin’d for curiosities sake. Certainly nothing can be more comical, than so many pretended embossings; all which however is fabulous. The true rhinoceros has a hide like to that of an elephant, and the older he is, the more wrinkled he will be: it is the same with us in that respect. We may very well affirm that the rhinoceros has but one horn, in spite of all the fabulous relations of those we call naturalists. This horn is at the extremity of the nose. He has a sort of hair in his tail that is black, as large as a great knitting-needle, and harder than whale-bone.
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A new voyage to the East-Indies
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