Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/710

638 like a cat, getting on our back and climbing up our legs and arms to our shoulder.

The animal charmed me by the gentleness of its manners from the beginning, but I was still more attracted to it by curiosity as to the species to which it belonged. Having no manual of descriptions by which to identify it, I was not able, at first, to refer it to any common type. But I considered that I was concerned with a rare, if not new, species of Cercopithecus.

The chief officer at Nyanga thought much of the gentle monkey, which he had had for some time, and which entertained him in his idle moments in the extreme solitude in which he lived. Yet, with the kindness I usually receive from the officers of the countries in which I travel, he offered to give it to me; and I confess that the animal was so scientifically interesting that I did not allow him to repeat the offer. When we left the port, two days afterward, I carried the interesting creature with me, and in recollection of the place where it had lived so long, I named it Nyanga.

From this time on, Nyanga formed part of our caravan. She was tied, of course, with a cord fixed to a little harness which was put upon her. By day the foreman of the caravan carried her on his shoulders, and at night she was tied to one of the posts of the tent. The best of care was taken of her.

Every one brought her a part of his meal, or some of the fruit found in the bush. In a few days she became perfectly at home with us. She allowed herself to be handled and caressed, and accompanied her graceful motions with low guttural cries expressive of her enjoyment.

When we afterward arrived at Letté Cama, our menagerie had been increased by several other monkeys; but these less familiar ones were confined in cages. Nyanga alone continued to enjoy a half-liberty. We shortly gave her a companion, a young monkey of the same species. Nyanga adopted it, hugging it closely during the night as they slept on a box in the tent.

One day when I was hunting in the forest around our camp some monkeys I had heard howling in the branches, one of my men met me and called to me to stop hunting, for Nyanga had escaped, and I might shoot her. I returned hastily to the camp and learned there that our pet, doubtless tired of being always captive, had gnawed her cord in two and fled into the woods. Baba, the Senegalian charged with the care of the menagerie, had gone on the track of Nyanga, who had not got very far away, but had climbed to the top of one of the great trees.

She was called to in vain; she had no thought of coming back, and seemed wild with joy at being able to leap freely from branch to branch, to run to the ends of the limbs and make them bend,