KARROO BEASTS, BIRDS AND REPTILES. 247 



something to eat. But Adonis, who had not forgotten, 

 and who was only too glad to pay off old scores, 

 caught the man by the hand, and, drawing him towards 

 him, bit and punished him severely. 



Here is another tale of revenge, in which the poor 

 ape played but a passive part in the hands of the 

 " superior " animal. A colonist, having killed a baboon, 

 and owing several of his neighbours a long-standing 

 grudge, bethought him of a truly fiendish manner of 

 revenging himself. Though it is unlikely that he had 

 ever read of Tantalus, he proceeded somewhat after that 

 classical example, and, cutting up the baboon, made him 

 into a stew, in which savoury disguise he served him 

 up as the piece de resistance at a dinner to which all 

 the obnoxious neighbours were bidden. The dish 

 proved a delicious one, and all the visitors ate of Pelops 

 Cynocephalus with great relish. The tableau may be 

 imagined when, at the end of the banquet, the host told 

 his guests what they had eaten. 



It must require considerable hardness of heart to kill 

 a baboon ; for the creature is so horribly and uncannily 

 human-looking, and, when wounded, cries in a pathetic 

 manner which must appeal to all but the most callous 



of consciences. A hunter once told T that he felt 



like a murderer after shooting one of them, and seeing 

 how in its dying agonies it pressed one finger upon the 

 hole made by the bullet ; crying like a child as it fixed 

 its eyes on him with piteous looks of reproach. 



Although the miniature Zoo at Swaylands never 

 boasted of a tame cynocephalus, we numbered among 



