ANIMALS. 43J 



totally lost to the pursuer ; for to attempt climbing the tree, to 

 bring either it or the young one down, would probably be fatal 

 from the number of serpents that are hid among the branches. 

 For this reason the sportsman always takes care to aim at the 

 head ; which if he hits, the monkey falls directly to the ground 

 and the young one comes down at the same time, clinging to its 

 dead parent. 



The Europeans along the coasts of Guinea often go into the 

 woods to shoot monkeys ; and nothing pleases the negroes more 

 than to see those animals drop, against which they have the 

 greatest animosity. They consider them, and not without rea- 

 son, as the most mischievous and tormenting creatures in the 

 world ; and are happy to see their numbers destroyed, upon a 

 double account ; as well because they dread their devastations, 

 as because they love their flesh. The monkey, which is always 

 skinned before it is eaten, when served up at a negro feast, looks 

 so like a child, that an European is shocked at the very sight. 

 The natives, however, who are not so nice, devour it as one of 

 the highest delicacies ; and assiduously attend our sportsmen to 

 profit by the spoil. But what they are chiefly astonished at, is 

 to see our travellers carefully taking the young ones alive, while 

 they leave them the old ones, that are certainly the most fit to be 

 eaten. They cannot comprehend what advantage can arise to us 

 from educating or keeping a little animal that by experience, they 

 know to be equally fraught with tricks and mischief: some of them 

 have even been led to suppose, that with a kind of perverse af- 

 fection, we love only creatures of the most mischievous kinds : 

 and having seen us often buy young and tame monkeys, they 

 have taken equal care to bring rats to our factors, offering them 

 for sale, and greatly disappointed at finding no purchaser for so 

 hopeful a commodity.' 



The negroes consider these animals as their greatest plague ; 

 and, indeed, they do incredible damage when they come in com- 

 panies to lay waste a field of Indian corn, or rice, or a planta- 

 tion of sugar-canes. They carry off as much as they are able ; 

 and they destroy ten times more than they bear away. Their 

 manner of plundering is pretty much like that of the baboons, 

 already mentioned, in a garden. One of them stands sentinel 



' Labat, Eelat. de I'Afric. Occident, p. 317. 



