Here the travelers saw a giraffe that the east African potentate of Malindi had presented to the Bengal ruler. The Chinese persuaded their hosts to part with the giraffe as a gift to the emperor and to procure another like it from Africa. When the giraffe arrived at the court in Nanjing in 1415, the emperor's philosophers identified it, despite its pair of horns, as the fabled chi'i-lin or unicorn, an animal associated with an age of exceptional peace and prosperity. As the fleet's merchants laid treasures from Arabia and India at the feet of the emperor, this omen must surely have seemed fitting.
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