so 
MONKEYS, 
prebend 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 affec- 
tion, 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 purchase for so 
hopeful a commodity.' 
These animals do incredible damage, when they 
come in companies to lay waste a field of Indian 
corn or rice, or a plantation 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 centinel upon a tree, while the 
rest are plundering, cautiously turning on every 
side, but particularly to that on which there is the 
greatest danger : in the mean time, the rest of the 
spoilers pursue their work with great silence and 
assiduity ; they are not contented with the first 
blade of corn, or the first cane that they happen 
to lay their hands on : they first pull up that 
which appears most alluring to the eye ; they 
turn it round, examine, compare it with others, 
and if they find it to their mind, stick it under 
one of their shoulders. When in this manner they 
have got their load, they begin to think of re- 
treating : but if it should happen that the owners 
of the field appear to interrupt their depredations, 
their faithful centinel instantly gives notice, by 
crying out, Houp, ho up, houp ; which the rest per- 
fectly understand, and all at once throwing down 
the com they hold in their left hands, scamper 
©ff upon three legs, carrying the remainder in the 
