Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/331

 is an example of a beast (a young one too) possessing abstracted sentiments to a very high degree. By its flight on the first appearance of the hunters, it is plain it apprehended danger to itself, it also reflected upon that of its mother, which was the cause of its return to her assistance. This affection or duty, or let us call it any thing we please, except instinct, was stronger than the fear of danger; and it must have conquered that fear by reflection before it returned, when it resolved to make its best and last efforts, for it never attempted to fly afterwards. I freely forgive that part of my readers, who know me and themselves so little, as to think I believe it worth my while to play the mountebank, for the great honour of diverting them; an honour far from being of the first rate in my esteem. If they should shew, in this place, a degree of doubt, that, for once, I am making use of the privilege of travellers, and dealing a little in the marvellous, it would be much more to the credit of their discernment, than their prodigious scruples about the reality or possibility of eating raw flesh; a thing that has been recorded by the united testimony of all that ever visited Abyssinia for these two hundred years, has nothing unreasonable in itself, though contrary to our practice in other cases; and can only be called in question now, through weakness, ignorance, or an intemperate desire to find fault, by those that believed that a man could get into a quart bottle.

I relate of the young elephant contains difficulties of another kind; though I am very well persuaded some will swallow it easily, who cannot digest the raw flesh. In both instances I adhere strictly to the truth; and I beg leave to assure those scrupulous readers, that if they knew their