the utmost ease and certainty and looking down with 

 calm curiosity at the clumsy scrambling dogs as they 

 vainly tried to follow. The dassies too watchful, 

 silent and rubber-footed played hide-and-seek with 

 them in the cracks and crevices ; but the dogs had 

 no chance there. 



Often there were races after baboons. There were 

 thousands of them along the Berg, but except when a 

 few were found in the open, we always called the dogs 

 in. Among a troop of baboons the best of dogs would 

 have no show at all. Ugly, savage and treacherous 

 as they are, they have at least one quality which 

 compels admiration they stand by each other. If 

 one is attacked or wounded the others will often turn 

 back and help, and they will literally tear a dog to 

 pieces. Even against one full-grown male a dog has 

 little or no chance ; for they are very powerful, quick 

 as lightning, and fierce fighters. Their enormous 

 jaws and teeth outmatch a dog's, and with four 

 1 hands ' to help them the advantage is altogether 

 too great. Their method of fighting is to hold the 

 dog with all four feet and tear pieces out of him 

 with their teeth. 



We knew the danger well, for there was a fighting 

 baboon at a wayside place not far from us a savage 

 brute, owned by a still greater savage. It was kept 

 chained up to a pole with its house on the top of the 

 pole ; and what the owner considered to be a good 

 joke was to entice dogs up, either to attack the baboon 

 or at least to come sniffing about within reach of it, 

 and then see them worried to death. The excuse was 



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