WITH FLASH-LIGHT AND RIFLE 



I used to watch these herds for hours with a good 

 field-glass. The mountain slopes ajjpeared to be peo- 

 pled by a primitive race of men busily moving about in 

 their stony fortresses. I suppose I was as much an ob- 

 ject of curiosity to the big male guards who did out- 

 post duty as they were to me. 



Baboons are rarely hunted for mere sport; to shoot 

 them and to see them die with all the signs of an almost 

 human agony goes against the grain of the true sports- 

 man. Yet I had to kill some, since I travelled as a col- 

 lector rather than a hunter. Once I wounded an old 

 male baboon and followed him into his cave, where I 

 found him dying, his hands pressed on the deadly 

 wound. The savage expression had left his face, and 

 he looked at me with an expression of suffering and 

 anguish, and perhaps also of reproach. Never shall I 

 forget this sight and the feelings it aroused in me. 



Another time I reached with my caravan, after a 

 march of twelve hours, a small brook. It flowed through 

 desert, rocky land. Suddenly one of my men startled 

 me with the cry, "Mtu bwana!" (Master, a man!) and 

 he pointed to a manlike forni which rose from behind 

 a rock about three hundred feet distant, looking very 

 weird in the twilight. No doubt the apparition looked 

 like a human being, but it was a large male baboon that 

 acted as sentinel for his herd. With a warning cry he 

 disappeared. 



Very often one can hear these warning sounds at 



33° 



