302 HYAENA. 



was full of them from the time it turned dark till 

 the dawn of day, seeking the different pieces of 

 slaughtered carcases which this cruel and unclean 

 people expose in the streets without burial, and 

 who firmly believe that these animals are Falasha 

 from the neighbouring mountains, transformed 

 by magic, and come down to eat human flesh in 

 the dark in safety. Many a time in the night, when 

 the king had kept me late in the palace, and it 

 was not my duty to lie there, in going across the 

 square from the king's house, not many hundred 

 yards distant, I have been apprehensive they 

 would bite me in the leg. They grunted in great 

 numbers about me, though I was surrounded with 

 several armed men, who seldom passed a night 

 without wounding or slaughtering some of them. 

 " One night in Maitsha, being very intent on 

 observation, I heard something pass behind me 

 towards the bed, but upon looking round could 

 perceive nothing. Having finished what I was 

 then about, I went out of my tent, resolving di- 

 rectly to return, which I immediately did, when I 

 perceived large blue eyes glaring at me in the 

 dark. I called upon my servant with a light, and 

 there was the Hyrena standing nigh the head of 

 the bed, with two or three large bunches of can- 

 dles in his mouth. To have fired at him I was in 

 danger of breaking my quadrant or other furni- 

 ture, and he seemed, by keeping the candles 

 steadily in his mouth, to wish for no other prey 

 at that time. As his mouth was full, and he had 

 no claws to tear with, I was not afraid of him, 

 but with a pike struck him as near the heart as I 



