Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/348

320 the 18th, about six in the morning, Erbab Gimbaro, coming down to our tent, brought thirty loaves of Dora as before, and four of wheat, for the journey; and we had already enough of honey, upon which we breakfasted with the Erbab, who, to confirm the friendship, took two or three glasses of strong spirits, which put him into excellent humour. His son, too, that he might atone for his last night's misbehaviour, brought a better camel than any we had seen, and exchanged it for one of those that came yesterday in the evening. I, on the other hand, gave him a cotton cloth, and some trifles, which made him perfectly happy; and we parted in the most cordial friendship possible, after having made a promise that, at my return, I should stay a week at Sancaho to hunt the elephant and rhinoceros.

leaving Sancaho, I had an opportunity of verifying a fact hitherto doubtful in natural history. Mr Hasselquist, the Swedish traveller, when at Cairo, saw the skins of two giraffos stuffed, which came from Sennaar. He gives as minute a description as possible he could from seeing the skins only; but says nothing about the horns, because I suppose he did not see them; on which account the doubt remained undecided, whether the giraffo's horns were solid as the deer's, and cast every year; or whether they were hollow, attached to a core, or bone, like those of sheep, and consequently permanent. The Count de Buffon conjectures them to be of this last kind, and so I found them. They are twisted in all respects like the horns of an antelope.

ten minutes past eight we set out from Sancaho; but my people took it into their heads, that, notwithstanding the fair behaviour of Erbab Gimbaro, he intended to lay some