This situation of the horn is very happily alluded to in the sacred writings: “My horn shalt thou _exalt_ like the horn of an unicorn[31]:” and the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, as I have already taken notice of in the course of my history[32], but was really an ornament, worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil, a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn. Some authors, for what reason I know not, have made the reem, or unicorn, to be of the deer or antelope kind, that is, of a genus whose very character is fear and weakness, very opposite to the qualities by which the reem is described in scripture; besides, it is plain the reem is not of the class of clean quadrupeds; and a late modern traveller, very whimsically, takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. It is impossible to determine which is the silliest opinion of the two. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia, for they themselves were shepherds of that country, in a transport, from contemplating the strength of Israel whom he was brought to curse, says, they had as it were the strength of the reem[33]. Job[34] makes frequent allusion to his great strength, and ferocity, and indocility. He asks, Will the reem be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? that is, Will he willingly come into thy stable, and eat at thy manger? And again, Canst thou bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the vallies after thee[35]? In other words, Canst thou make him go in the plow or harrows? Isaiah[36], who of all the prophets seem to have known Egypt and Ethiopia the best, when prophecying about the destruction of Idumea, says, that the reem shall come down with the fat cattle; a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neighbourhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation of Egypt, he mentions as one manner of effecting it, the bringing down, the fly[37] from Ethiopia to meet the cattle in the desert, and among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did not ordinarily come but on command[38], and where the cattle fled every year to save themselves from that insect. The Rhinoceros, in Geez, is called Arwé Harish, and in the Amharic, Auraris, both which names signify the large wild beast with the horn. This would seem as if applied to the species that had but one horn. On the other hand, in the country of the Shangalla, and in Nubia adjoining, he is called Girnamgirn, or horn upon horn, and this would seem to denote that he had two. The Ethiopic text renders the word Reem, Arwé Harish, and this the Septuagint translates Monoceros, or Unicorn.