THE MONKE Y FA MIL K 157 



was delicately white wherever his clothing had defended it from the 

 scorching rays of the sun. In fact, I found his skin in all respects 

 the same as my own, saving that, where the sun had given mine the 

 appearance of mahogany, his was blotched with broad freckles of a 

 lighter tint. In all other- respects, he was in reality a negro from 

 head to foot ; for his hair was curly, and his nose depressed, his lips 

 protuberant, and his ears as small as those of a genuine coal-black 

 son of Africa. He stood apparently about five feet nine inches in 

 height, with a finely-expanded chest, and with a back as straight as 

 an arrow. But he was deficient in the calves of his legs, which latter 

 were rather inclined to be what we should term bandy; whilst you 

 could not help remarking the protrusion of his heels, so noted in the 

 negro. Both his father and his mother were healthy, jet-black 

 negroes ; so that Bochra Jem could not by any chance be a mulatto, 

 or of any of those castes which are removed from the breed of half 

 black and half white, constituting a true mulatto. I should say that 

 he was twenty years old, or thereabouts, but I did not ask his age. 

 Probably he was the only white negro ever seen in Demerara. On 

 taking leave of him, I put a dollar into his hand for 4he trouble I 

 had caused him. His dark eye brightened up, whilst he smiled con- 

 tentedly through a set of white teeth, and, as I went out of the room, 

 he said, " God bless you, massa." A few years after this, on my 

 return from England to the wilds of Guiana, I stopped for a couple 

 of days in Stabroek, and went to the house where Jem resided. But 

 death had claimed him. He had died, they told me, " somewhat 

 suddenly, about nine months ago." His owner remarked, that poor 

 Jemmy' a strange appearance was much against his mixing with his 

 brethren, who at times would turn him into ridicule. Had this good 

 lady read the Latin classics, I would have observed to her that, 

 whilst " alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur" 



I have not yet quite done with my remarks on what travellers say 

 of the orang-outang. I marvel that a naturalist, so discerning and 

 so clever as he whose history of this ape I have quoted, should have 

 selected his materials from the reports of some and the writings of 

 others, which deserve neither credence nor attention. In fact, their 

 accounts of the orang-outang are manifest absurdities. 



Had I but lent a willing ear to tales of some whose minds were 



