BABOONS. 291 







of the interior of Africa, none so much resembles the 

 baboon as an Irishman who claims his direct descent 

 from Finn M'Coul, or some king whose name begins 

 with an O' or Me. Kings were as plentiful as black- 

 berries in those days. What a delightfully aristo- 

 cratic place Ireland must then have been to reside 

 in ! I have stood upon heights in Connemara 

 that overlook the broad Atlantic, and I have rested 

 upon the bluffs that back Carlisle and Camden Forts, 

 in Co. Cork, and I believe that the sight of angry 

 breakers and turbulent ocean has a natural tendency 

 to make a ferocious people. In the Drakensberg, 

 where they attain their loftiest summits, com- 

 manding the undulating pastures of Natal or the 

 widespread flats of the Free State, there baboons 

 exist in numbers. Irishmen of the lower orders have 

 the Atlantic Ocean to gaze upon, the baboons have 

 their waving plains ; the one has water, the other 

 has land as a prospect, but the result is wonderfully 

 similar in producing likeness in physiognomy. Of 

 course I only mean such Irish as one sees in the 

 steerage of emigrant ships, or loafing about the 

 " Five Points," New York, or idling round the 

 grain elevators of Chicago, or doing a little steve- 



