Page:A voyage round the world, in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (IA b30413849 0001).pdf/71

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and red colour, whose numerous habitations are round and deep holes in the dry and parched soil. Our sailors, who catch at every thing that may afford them diversion, purchased about fifteen or twenty monkies, known by the name of St. Jago, or green monkies (simia sabæa); which were a little bigger than cats, and of a greenish-brown colour, with black faces and paws. On each side of their mouth, they had a kind of pouch (like many others of the monkey tribe) which the English in the West-Indian colonies, call by their Spanish name alforjes. The antic tricks of these little monkies were amusing for some days, while their novelty lasted; but they soon became insipid companions, were neglected, sometimes cruelly bandied about the vessel, and starved to death for want of fresh food, so that only three of them reached the Cape of Good Hope. A harmless race of animals, dragged from the happy recess of native shades, to wear out the rest of their lives in continual anguish and torment, deserve a pitying remembrance, though humanity would fain have drawn the veil over all acts of iron-hearted insensibility, and wanton barbarism.

We got under sail in the evening and steered to the southward, having mild weather with frequent showers of rain on the following days, and the wind blowing from N.E. by N. to N.N.E. On the 16th, at eight o'clock in the evening, we saw a luminous fiery meteor, of an ob-