BABOONS. 5 



sional kloof, planted by nature with timber worthy 

 of a place in any nobleman's park or horticultural 

 display. 



During the night perfect quiet reigned around 

 our encampment ; for know, kind reader, that the 

 lion, hyena and jackal, which, thirty years ago, knew 

 this country as their habitat, have now been almost 

 all killed off by the use of that diabolical invention 

 of man's skill and research strychnine. Baboons 

 and monkeys, being vegetable feeders, have not 

 suffered in the same ratio as have the carnivorae ; 

 thus, from the top of some rocky krantz, occasionally 

 would boom through the still night air the far from 

 unpleasant voices of the sentinels of the first-men- 

 tioned species. Despised brute as the baboon is 

 by all the human family, he is gifted with wonderful 

 instincts ; perhaps this causes man to be jealous, and 

 therefore to dislike him. But let me say, could we 

 imbue our soldier sentinels with the same indefati- 

 gable sense of duty and the same powers of detecting 

 indications of danger, our troops would seldom suffer 

 surprise or find an enemy penetrating their lines 

 before being discovered. Early to bed and early 

 to rise, whatever it promises in the old adage, in- 



