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have been no other than the then Râja of Pâsei. It is in writing of this State that Polo tells us of wild elephants and of "numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big." His description of these latter monsters is delightful:

"They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles (and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue). The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. 'Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and it is not in the least like that which our stories tell us of as being caught in the lap of a virgin: in fact 'tis altogether different from what we fancied."

Here, in spite of some flowers of fancy, we have no sort of difficulty in recognising the rhinoceros, a truly different creature to the graceful unicorn of our legends; but it is curious that the Sumatran species is two horned, and that while it has hair like that of a water-buffalo, it carries its head far more erect than does the one-horned variety commonly met with on the other side of the Straits of Malacca. One cannot help fancying that Polo had actually seen a specimen of the one-horned rhinoceros, and that he subsequently heard of the existence of the creature in Sumatra, for on the whole he describes the animal with wonderful accuracy.