Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/122

 there to say, that the animal producing these large horns was a carnivorous bull of a prodigious size, inhabiting the interior parts of Africa. That no illustration of this kind may be wanting, a copperplate of this curious bull is, I think, in some of the first volumes of the Philosophical Transactions. The origin of the tale is believed to be in Bernier or Thevenot. It may, however, with great certainty, be relied upon, that no such animal exists in Africa, nor probably in the whole creation. The animal furnishing those monstrous horns is a cow or bull, which would be reckoned of a middling size in England; its head and neck are larger and thicker in proportion, but not very remarkably so. I have been told this animal was first brought by the Galla from near the Line, where it rains continually, and the sun is little seen. This extraordinary size of its horns proceeds from a disease that the cattle have in those countries, of which they die, and is probably derived from their pasture and climate.

Whenever the animal shews symptoms of this disorder, he is set apart in the very best and quietest grazing-place, and never driven nor molested from that moment. His value lies then in his horns, for his body becomes emaciated and lank in proportion as the horns grow large. At the last period of his life the weight of his head is so great that he is unable to lift it up, or at least for any space of time. The joints of his neck become callous at last, so that it is not any longer in his power to lift his head. In this situation he dies, with scarcely flesh covering his bones, and it is then the horns are of the greatest size and value. I have seen horns that would contain as much as a common-sized iron-hooped water-pale, such as they make use of in the