262 THE MANDRILL. 



which occasionally make incursions into the vilkges and culti- 

 vated fields, and plunder them with impunity. The male is 

 readily distinguished by its enormously swollen and protuberant 

 cheek-bones, which are marked obliquely with deep furrows, and 

 bright and variegated colours. Some years ago there was a very 

 fine specimen of this Baboon in the travelling menagerie of the 

 late Mr. Womb well ; and on one occasion we remember to have 

 seen it break out into a sudden and ungovernable tempest of 

 passion, foaming and quivering with rage, for no other reason 

 than that one of the keepers made a feint of throwing his arms 

 around a young woman who was standing before its cage. Such 

 exhibitions are characteristic of this animal, and more or less so 

 of all the Baboons. 



Passing by the Gibraltar Baboon, from time immemorial the 

 " ape " of the showman, the Drill, and the Derrias, the Baboon 

 of the ancients, we must say a word or two about the Chacma 

 (Cynocephalus porcarius\ the Blackfaced Baboon of the Cape. 

 These animals are well known to the farmers of South Africa, 

 from the depredations they commit on the cultivated districts, 

 and are not unfrequently tracked home to their mountain retreats 

 by the exasperated boors. When the Chacma is surprised in 

 this manner, the cry of alarm is raised, and the whole troop be- 

 take themselves to the rocky cliffs, which, though often several 

 hundred feet in perpendicular height, they scale with surprising 

 agility, the young ones clinging to their mothers, and the old 

 males bringing up the rear. The old male Chacma is an animal 

 of enormous strength, and is not to be meddled with with impu- 

 nity by either dogs or men. In captivity, it is good-tempered 

 and frolicsome while young, but as age advances it becomes 

 savage and dangerous. It is of one of these Baboons that Le 

 Vaillant has given so amusing an account in his African travels. 

 Kees was a young animal, and was still graced, therefore, with 

 the juvenile amiability of his race. He was a universal favourite, 

 but thoroughly deep and wily, and moreover shockingly ad- 

 dicted to pilfering. Food mysteriously disappeared when meals 

 were being prepared, and of course Kees was either not to be 

 found, or else stood by with elevated eyebrows, wondering with 

 the rest where the missing provender could have gone. He had 

 gained a perfect ascendancy over his master's dogs, and, with the 

 exception of one of them, whose cunning was more than a match 



