146 THE MONKE Y FA MIL Y 



the fortress, I saw several apes passing over the rocks on all-fours 

 towards the western side; the wind blowing strongly irom the 

 eastward. It is difficult to conceive how these animals can procure 

 a sufficient supply of food the year throughout, or how they can 

 bear the chilling blasts of winter. One would suppose that they 

 must often be upon very short commons, and often in want of a 

 blanket. But " God tempers the wind," said Maria, " to the shorn 

 lamb." It would be gratifying in the extreme if we could learn, by 

 any chance, at what period of time this interesting ape made its first 

 appearance on the Rock of Gibraltar. If apes migrate from Barbary 

 to escape the winter season, then we may safely conclude that the 

 apes, now prisoners in Gibraltar, would make a similar movement 

 were it in their power to do so. But they cannot join their com- 

 rades, for there is a fearful rush of water betwixt Calpe and Abylae. 

 The Abbe* Raynal, in his " History of the East and West Indies," 

 has given us an account of a deplorable convulsion which, in remote 

 antiquity, once took place beyond the " Pillars of Hercules." On 

 the authority of Diodorus Siculus and Plato, he tells of a large island 

 named Atalantis. " It was a region more extensive than Asia and 

 Lybia taken together, and it disappeared in an instant." Might not, 

 then, a convulsion of nature, in a still remoter period, have separated 

 Europe from Africa, and have formed the present channel betwixt 

 the far-famed Calpe and Abylae? If we had proof sufficient that 

 such a convulsion ever did occur, the location of apes in Gibraltar 

 would no longer be a perplexing enigma. 



Let us return to monkeys in general. 



It is far from my intention to uphold or patronise the tricks and 

 movements of these animals when under the command or tutelage 

 of civilised man. Such antics have nothing to do with the real cha- 

 racter of monkeys in their wild domains. Innumerable are the nar- 

 ratives, in modern and in ancient books, of gentleness in the apes, of 

 ferocity in the baboons, and of playfulness in all of the tribe, from 

 the orang-outang down to the little black sacawinki, no larger than 

 a rat, in the interminable forests of Guiana. 



These amusing anecdotes, in support of the marvellous, may all 

 be very well to frighten children or to make them laugh ; but, like 

 Martin Luther's reformation, they are not orthodox. 



