A Curious Vine Hung Like A Rope, With Turk's-Head
Knots About A Foot Apart On Its Whole Length, Like The
Hand-Over-Hand Ropes Of Gymnasiums.
Other ropes were studded all
over with thick blunt bosses, resembling much the outbreak on one
sort of Arts-and-Crafts door:
The sort intended to repel
Mail-clad Hosts.
The monkeys undoubtedly used such obvious highways through the
trees. These little people were very common. As we walked along,
they withdrew before us. We could make out their figures
galloping hastily across the open places, mounting bushes and
stubs to take a satisfying backward look, clambering to treetops,
and launching themselves across the abysses between limbs. If we
went slowly, they retired in silence. If we hurried at all, they
protested in direct ratio to the speed of our advance. And when
later the whole safari, loads on heads, marched inconsiderately
through their jungle! We happened to be hunting on a parallel
course a half mile away, and we could trace accurately the
progress of our men by the outraged shrieks, chatterings, appeals
to high heaven for at least elemental justice to the monkey
people.
Often, too, we would come on concourses of the big baboons. They
certainly carried on weighty affairs of their own according to a
fixed polity. I never got well enough acquainted with them to
master the details of their government, but it was indubitably built
on patriarchal lines. When we succeeded in approaching without
being discovered, we would frequently find the old men baboons
squatting on their heels in a perfect circle, evidently
discussing matters of weight and portent.
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