BIOGRAPHY. 19 



that the Abyssinians ate beef raw in preference to cooked. 

 Neither would they believe that Le Vaillant ever chased 

 a giraffe, because, as they said, there was no such animal, 

 and that therefore, Le Vaillant could not have seen it. 



Similarly, some of Waterton's statements were received 

 with a storm of derision, more especially his account of 

 the sloth and its strange way of living ; of the mode of 

 handling deadly serpents, and above all, his ride on the 

 back of a cayman. There is however one honourable 

 exception in the person of Sydney Smith, who devoted 

 one of his wittiest and happiest essays to a review of 

 the Wanderings and fully recognized the extraordinary 

 powers of Waterton. 



According to Sydney Smith, Waterton " appears in early 

 life to have been seized with an unconquerable aversion to 

 Piccadilly, and to that train of meteorological questions 

 and answers which forms the great staple of polite con- 

 versation. . . 



"The sun exhausted him by day, the mosquitos bit 



him by night, but on went Mr. Charles Waterton 



happy that he had left his species far away, and is at last 

 in the midst of his blessed baboons." 



Nothing can be better than Sydney Smith's summary of 

 the life of a sloth, who " moves suspended, rests suspended, 

 sleeps suspended, and passes his whole life in suspense, 

 like a young clergyman distantly related to a bishop." 

 Or, than his simile of the box-tortoise and the boa, 

 who " swallows him shell and all, and consumes him 

 slowly in the interior, as the Court of Chancery does a 

 large estate." 



Or, what can be happier than the turn he gives to 

 Waterton's account of the toucan ? 



" How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of nature ! 

 To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the forests of 



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