Parkyns, Mansfield (1868) Life in Abyssinia, John Murray, p. 404
There is an animal, which I know not where to class, as no European has hitherto succeeded in obtaining a specimen of it: it is supposed by the natives to be far more active, powerful and dangerous than even the lion, and consequently held by them in the greatest possible dread. They call it 'wobbo' or 'mantillit,' and some hold it in superstitious awe, looking upon it more in the light of an evil spirit with an animal's form than a wild beast. Their descriptions of this animal are vague in the extreme: some say that its skin is partly that of a lion, but intermixed with that of the leopard and hyena; others, again, assert that its face is human, or very like it. It appears int he valleys, happily only rarely; for they say that when it takes its abode near a village, it pays nightly visits, entertaining the very houses, and carrying off the children, and even occasionally grown-up persons. One had been killed some years ago on the river Weney, and its skin presented...