290 THE UNKNOWN. 



negroes kill it, and carry it home to make shields from 

 its skin. 



"N.B. — This man was well acquainted with the rhino- 

 ceros, which he distinguished, under the name of Fetit, 

 from the A'nasa. On June the 14th I was at Kursi, 

 also in Kordofan, and met there a slave-merchant who 

 was not acquainted with my first informer, and gave me 

 spontaneously the same description of the A'nasa, adding 

 that he had killed and eaten one not long ago, and that its 

 flesh was well flavoured." * 



Almost as little known as the heart of Africa are the 

 depths of ocean. The eye penetrates in the clear crystal- 

 line sea a few fathoms down, and beholds mailed and 

 glittering forms flitting by ; the dredge gathers its scrap- 

 ings; divers plunge out of sight, and bring up pearls; 

 and the sounding-lead goes down, down, down, hundreds 

 of fathoms, and when it comes up, we gaze with eager 

 eyes to see what adheres to the tallow " arming ;" the tiny 

 sheUs, the frustules of diatoms, even the atoms of coral 

 sand, — curious to learn what is at the bottom of the deep. 

 But, after all, it is much like the brick which the Greek 

 fool carried about as a sample of the house he had to let. 



Who can penetrate into the depths of the ocean to trace 

 the arrowy course of the mailed and glittering beings 

 that shoot alonof like animated beams of lio^ht ? Who can 

 follow them to their rocky beds and coral caverns ? The 

 wandering mariner sees with interested curiosity the flying- 

 fishes leaping in flocks from the water, and the eager 

 * Athenaeum, Jan. 1849. 



