ENTERTAINING VARIETIES. 693 



The highlands, however, are still pretty well wooded, and there is 

 no lack of game, though the extraordinary shyness of the birds shows 

 that they must suffer much persecution. Of the four-footed animals, 

 too, the smaller ones are more timid and the large ones much fiercer 

 than in our own country ; at our approach deer and rabbits fled with 

 incredible swiftness, and, when we went into camp, a troop of baboons 

 up in the rocks kept up a continuous sort of coughing bark, like en- 

 raged watch-dogs. The Karman told me that the Monakees kill them 

 without mercy, and I must own that they are certainly very provoking 

 brutes. Yet they are children of our elder mother* and have pre- 

 served the knowledge that men have lost by their sins. " They know 

 the way, and teach us without speech," as the poet says ; and for days 

 have I often watched them without sating my pleasure. Their in- 

 quisitiveness tempted them to approach our camp from behind, and, 

 if we pretended to be otherwise engaged, they came nearer and nearer 

 and diverted me much as I watched them from behind my shawl-tent ; 

 but, if my rogue of a guide rose suddenly to his feet, they fled with 

 shrieks that made our ears ache. At last I persuaded the Karman to 

 keep quiet, and just before sunset another troop came down from the 

 cliffs on our right, and tried to steal upon us by crawling along under 

 cover of the bushes and rocks. They walked on all-fours, but now 

 and then one of the old ones would raise himself on his hind-legs to 

 reconnoiter, while the youngsters raced around like frisky puppies. I 

 verily believe that they would have entered our tent if we had con- 

 tinued to keep still ; but, seeing that one of the youngsters had ap- 

 proached within a dozen yards of the camp, I made a sudden rush, 

 just as he was in the act of climbing a tree-stump. Before he had 

 reached the cliffs I overtook him, and finding escape impossible he 

 threw himself on his back ; and, instead of fighting me when I tried 

 to lay hold of him, he leaped upon my arm, and, hugging it with all his 

 might, began to chatter, very much like a prisoner pleading for mercy. 

 But, when I grabbed him by the neck, his chattering turned into 

 piercing shrieks, that continued even after I had wrapped him up in 

 my shawl. His relatives had rushed up the cliffs like a flock of fright- 

 ened goats ; at the sound of the screams, however, they suddenly 

 stopped, and some of the old males began to move upon our camp 

 with hoarse yells that often resembled the challenge of a human 

 voice. 



They had advanced within half a stone's-throw, when the Karman 

 whispered to me that in Kapibad f I could buy young monkeys by the 

 dozen, and that we had better let this one go. As the noise was grow- 

 but Professor Widerleger is probably right that it refers merely to the ridicule which 

 the metropolitan Turks are apt to visit upon the theological speculations of the Arabs. 



* "Beni abd'il Kabira," hijos de la prima madre ; a term derived from the writings 

 of the Sufist mystics. 



f The chief town of Monakistan. 



