Clara's Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe

In 1741, an enterprising Dutch sea captain transported a young female Indian rhinoceros from Assam to Europe, where she was displayed before everyone from peasants to princes.

In an age before railways and modern roads, the three-ton Clara, as she became known, had to travel in an enormous coach drawn by eight horses. For seventeen years she journeyed across mainland E...