Page:Voyage from France to Cochin-China- in the Ship Henry.djvu/27

124 time saw two humming-birds, whirling about with prodigious rapidity, coming very close to me and uttering a shrill cry, from which I concluded their nest to be near at hand: but we could not discover it. There also I saw what is called the wild cock, certainly the most beautiful bird I had ever seen, and of the same kind with that stated to be found in Pulo Condor and Sumatra. I was unluckily too far off to hit the bird, nor with all my endeavours was it ever in my power to procure one to carry home. In Cochin-China, however, exists another bird, still more extraordinary than the wild cock, unknown I apprehend to all ornithologists, and of which I never saw but a single feather. The emperor himself has not been more fortunate. According to the popular account, this extraordinary creature inhabits the inaccessible mountains of Phuyenne. They call it kinntrey, or the genius. It is of the size of a pigeon, having the beak red, the head black, the neck white, the wings a golden yellow, the belly and tail ash-colour. The most remarkable peculiarity is the tail, which is in length above eight feet: the feather which I saw, although the end had been cut off, measured five feet six inches English. Of this bird many marvellous stories are related by the peasants, which must be set down to ignorance and imagination, as well as the report of a race of men with tails, in the southern country of Siampa. Of these extraordinary beings, called moys or wild men, the mandarin of the strangers himself gave me an account from his own ocular examination, while commanding a corps of elephants in that province. One of them he carried to the capital and presented him to the emperor, who sent him back to his own country with many rich presents. My respectable friends the French mandarins had never seen these extraordinary creatures; but they had so often heard their existence affirmed by men of character and probity, that they knew not how to disbelieve the report. The tail was said to be in length about eight inches and a half. Although endowed with speech, as well as with the human figure, the mandarin seemed, I thought, to conceive them to be only irrational animals,

Cochin-China possesses abundance of animals of various sorts, but with the foregoing exceptions, none probably which may not be found in the adjoining countries in the internal parts: for it is naturally but a long narrow range of land, bounded by the sea on the east, and by chains of hills on the west. A skilful naturalist might there probably discover many curious and rare animals, but none of an unknown class. To the botanist a spacious field would be laid open hitherto unexplored; but in the present state and dispositions of the