Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/712

640 there was no certainty that Nyanga might not meet some companion and follow him without thinking any more of us. From time to time we heard her calls, which the natives knew so well. They call this species the king of monkeys, for they believe that when its voice is heard all the monkeys in the wood keep silent.

But Baba, the Senegalian, provoked that one of the monkeys given him to take care of should have escaped, made every effort to catch the runaway. He had climbed an enormous tree with a trunk so large that it could not be scaled except by gymnastic efforts of which the blacks alone, who are almost as agile as the monkeys, are capable. He was away at the top, close against a branch, motionless, and hardly distinguishable from it. He had taken with him a light pole at the end of which was fixed a cord with a slip knot, and he hoped that he could get near enough to the monkey to take it in his snare. With a patience of which we whites would be incapable, he waited for the favorable moment. He had been there nearly three hours without moving, when all at once we heard him crying out from the branches, "Nyanga is caught!" It was true. Baba had waited till the monkey in her gambols had got upon a large branch that hung directly over the lake, had urged her gradually to the slender extremities of the bough; and there the animal had been forced to let herself be approached, for her only means of escape was to jump from a height of forty or fifty metres into the lake on the bank of which we were encamped. This adventure cost Nyanga the loss of all her liberty. In order to prevent her escaping again she was shut up like any common monkey in a cage, and was not let out from it except when we were camped at a post.

After this long lapse of about a month, which was required for the return from these distant regions, Nyanga, with twenty companions of various species which we had picked up on the way, took the express to Paris, and entered the Museum of Natural History, where she became the object of special attentions.

M. Milne-Edwards, on examining the animal, recognized in it a species still very rare, of which the British Museum has three skins from the island of Fernando Po. Bennett made a new species of it, which he describes as Cercopithecus pogonias. The specimen we brought is therefore the first that has come to Europe alive. Fortunately, I killed an adult male of this species in my African hunts, so that the French galleries also possess a stuffed specimen of it.

The Cercopithecus pogonias is a type reaching the full dimensions of the genus—that is, adult individuals measure from about forty-five to fifty centimetres in height. Their tail is very long, reaching eighty centimetres. The skin is gray—almost black—upon the back, passes with a lighter tint on the flanks, and is