FOURTH JOURNEY. 



251 



branch like the pendulum of a clock. It answers all 

 the purposes of a fifth hand to the monkey, as 

 naturalists have already observed. 



The large red monkey of Demerara is not 



The large red . 



Monkey of De- a baboon, though it goes by that name, 

 having a long prensile tail.* Nothing can 

 sound more dreadful than its nocturnal howlings. 

 While lying in your hammock in these gloomy and 

 immeasurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals, 

 from eleven o'clock at night till daybreak. You would 

 suppose that half the wild beasts of the forest were 

 collecting for the work of carnage. Now, it is the 

 tremendous roar of the jaguar, as he springs on his 

 prey ; now, it changes to his terrible and deep -toned 

 growlings, as he is pressed on all sides by superior 

 force ; and now, you hear his last dying moan, beneath 

 a mortal wound. 



Some naturalists have supposed that these awful 

 sounds, which you would fancy are those of enraged 

 and dying wild beasts, proceed from a number of the 

 red monkeys howling in concert. One of them alone is 

 capable of producing all these sounds ; and the anato- 

 mist, on an inspection of the trachea, will be fully 

 satisfied that this is the case. When you look at him, 

 as he is sitting on the branch of a tree, you will see a 

 lump in his throat, the size of a large hen's egg. In 

 dark and cloudy weather, and just before a squall of 

 rain, this monkey will often howl in the day-time; 

 and if you advance cautiously, and get under the 

 high and tufted tree where he is sitting, you may 

 have a capital opportunity of witnessing his wonderful 



* T believe prensile is a new-coined word. I have seen it, but do not 

 remember where. 



