Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/354

 —Today we again walked to the Falls from the hotel, a distance of half a mile. Captain Mosley, of the British army, who shared a sleeping apartment with me on the train coming here, accompanied us. The captain is changing his station, and has with him four hunting dogs and a black boy who has been his cook seven years. This black boy accompanied us on the walk, to exercise the dogs, and on the way, the dogs in ranging about, encountered a bunch of baboons. The captain and black boy ran into the woods, toward the big noise the fight stirred up, and I followed them, arriving just in time to see the dogs whipped, and the baboons scamper up the trees. The captain says the dogs would have been killed had they found full-grown male baboons, instead of small-sized females and young ones. Baboons are a great nuisance all over this section. They have almost human intelligence, and are very adroit thieves. I have been told that baboons will attack a woman, if they find her alone, but that they have great respect for men, whom they associate with a gun. Near the hotel is a camp of soldiers, and they have a tame baboon. They also have a tame deer of a variety not much larger than a jack rabbit. The soldiers pick up the deer, and stand it on a table. There are dozens of different kinds of buck here, ranging from the size of a rabbit to the size of an ox. The soldiers told me that plenty of reed buck may be found within four miles of the Falls, but this is the closed season, and one of the duties of the soldiers is to protect the game. Last night one of the soldiers saw a leopard prowling around the camp. A few days ago a lion was killed