THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MOSES 93 



evinced a certain degree of appreciation and grati- 

 tude in return. He would divide any morsel of food 

 with me, which is, perhaps, the highest test of the 

 affection of any animal. I cannot say that such an 

 act was genuine benevolence, or an earnest of affec- 

 tion in a true sense of the term, but nothing except 

 deep affection or abject fear impels such actions, and 

 certainly fear was not his motive. 



There were others whom he liked and made him- 

 self familiar with ; there were some he feared and 

 others he hated ; but his manner towards me was 

 that of deep affection. It was not alone in return for 

 the food he received, because my boy gave him food 

 more frequently than I did, and many others from 

 time to time fed him. His attachment was like an 

 infatuation that had no apparent motive, was unselfish 

 and supreme. 



The chief purpose of my living among the animals 

 being to study the sounds they uttered, I gave strict 

 attention to those made by Moses. For a time it 

 was difficult to detect more than two or three distinct 

 sounds, but as I grew more and more familiar with 

 them I could detect a variety of them, and by 

 constantly watching his actions and associating them 

 with his sounds I learned to interpret certain ones to 

 mean certain things. 



In the course of my sojourn with him I learned a 

 certain sound that he always uttered when he saw 

 anything that he was familiar with, such as a man or 

 a dog, but he could not tell me which of the two it 

 was. If he saw anything strange to him he could 



