274 TRAVELS IN 
one gave to the sultan of Mecca, as a most precious and rare 
gift : they were sent him out of Ethiopia by a king of that 
country, who desired by that present to gratify the sultan of 
Mecca." Father Lobo, in his history of Abyssinia, describes 
the unicorn as a beautiful horse ; but Father Lobo was con- 
sidered as a person worthy of little credit, because he related 
things that were new. A modern traveller through the same 
country, in detailing some of the same circumstances touched 
npon by the former writer, has met with no better success. 
The schooled mind is apt to feel a propensity for rejecting 
every thing new, unless conveyed to it through the channel of 
demonstrative evidence, which, on all occasions, is not to be 
obtained; whilst, on the other hand, credulity swallows de- 
ception in every flimsy covering. The one is, perhaps, 
equally liable to shut out truth, as the other is to imbibe 
falsehood. Nature's wide domain is too varied to be shackled 
with a syllogism. What nations, M'hat animals, what plants, 
and other natural productions, may yet be discovered in the 
imknown parts of the globe, a man, who has studied nature 
in the closet only, would hardly be supposed presumptuous 
enough to form a conjecture ; yet such is the bias that the 
reputation of a name begets with the multitude, that the 
verdict of a few closet philosophers generally establishes or 
destroys the credibility of an author's testimony. 
Of all the accessible parts of the earth, the interior of 
Southern Africa is the least known to Europeans. A few 
paltry establishments of the Portuguese lie widely scattered 
along the two coasts ; and the Dutch have colonized a few 
hundred miles from the southern angle along the two shores ; 
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