giant in the world, and Mr Paap, the smallest dwarf in the world, and a
female dwarf, who was smaller still, and Miss Biffin, who did everything
without legs or arms. There was also the learned pig, and the
Herefordshire ox, and a hundred other sights which I cannot now
remember. We walked about for an hour or two seeing the outside of every
thing: we determined to go and see the inside. First we went into
Richardson's, where we saw a bloody tragedy, with a ghost and thunder,
and afterwards a pantomime, full of tricks, and tumbling over one
another. Then we saw one or two other things, I forget what; but this I
know, that, generally speaking, the outside was better, than the inside.
After this, feeling very hungry, we agreed to go into a booth and have
something to eat. The tables were ranged all round, and in the centre
there was a boarded platform for dancing. The ladies were there all
ready dressed for partners; and the music was so lively, that I felt
very much inclined to dance, but we had agreed to go and see the wild
beasts fed at Mr Polito's menagerie, and as it was now almost eight
o'clock, we paid our bill and set off. It was a very curious sight, and
better worth seeing than any thing in the fair; I never had an idea that
there were so many strange animals in existence. They were all secured
in iron cages, and a large chandelier with twenty lights, hung in the
centre of the booth, and lighted them up, while the keeper went round
and stirred them up with his long pole; at the same time he gave us
their histories, which were very interesting. I recollect a few of them.
There was the tapir, a great pig with a long nose, a variety of the
hiptostamass, which the keeper said was an amphibilious animal, as
couldn't live on land, and _dies_ in the water--however, it seemed to
live very well in a cage. Then there was the kangaroo with its young
ones peeping out of it--a most astonishing animal. The keeper said that
it brought forth two young ones at a birth, and then took them into its
stomach again, until they arrived at years of discretion. Then there was
the pelican of the wilderness, (I shall not forget him), with a large
bag under his throat, which the man put on his head as a night-cap: this
bird feeds its young with its own blood--when fish are scarce. And there
was the laughing hyaena, who cries in the wood like a human being in
distress, and devours those who come to his assistance--a sad instance
of the depr