82 HUNTING IN THE JLNULE. 



reach and break oft", chattering and making faces at us as 

 only a chimpanzee can. The voice of his owner brought 

 him down at hist, and we soon became fast friends. 



The most surprising part of the whole thing was 

 Jack's remarkable quickness of apprehension, and his 

 choice of alternatives — always hitting the better — in 

 reaching a desired end. In fact, one cannot conceive of 

 a trick or clever ruse that he could not fathom and make 

 use of, as was further shown in his strange partnersliip 

 with a great mastiff of rare strain preserved only in 

 London, from which city one of my host's correspondents 

 had sent him. This animal w\as a great curiosity in these 

 latitudes, where European dogs seldom live long on ac- 

 count of the heat and especially the diseased food which 

 they find everywhere, and which he had so far avoided 

 by being carefully confined in a large enclosure built for 

 the purpose. 



Jack, the rascal, took a fancy to the brute, and finding 

 his taste for the forbidden food, undertook to supply him 

 with bones stolen from the kitchen. In return for this, 

 the mastiff devoted whole days to serving the chimpanzee 

 in the capacity of a pillow ; and the latter enjoyed nothing 

 so much as lying at full length on a mat, with his head 

 on his friend's big back. 



As I said before. Jack, when found out m his theft, 

 fearing the thrashing he deserved, took refuge in a tree, 

 and was brought to terms only by the sight of his master, 

 who exercised a real fascination over him, and before 



