134 
APES AND MONKEYS. 
forty, or even up to seventy; and there were three such bodies of them in the 
country immediately about Simon’s Bay, and in the tract stretching down to Cape 
Point. When on the feed, two or three keep watch, and one usually hears them 
before one sees them. The warning cry is like the German hock, much prolonged. 
As soon as they see one, three or four of them mount on the scattered rocks so as 
to have a clear view over the bushes and heaths, and watch every movement of 
the enemy, so that it is extremely difficult to get within shot of them. If one 
stands still, or does not go any nearer, merely passing by, they employ themselves, 
as they sit unconcernedly, in scratching in the usual monkey fashion, but still never 
losing sight of their object of suspicion. 
“ Once I came across a troop on a sudden, on looking over a low cliff. They 
dashed off at a tremendous pace, galloping on all fours, till far out of shot, when 
they climbed up on to a rocky eminence, and calmly sat down to watch me. The 
baboons live on roots, which they dig up, and on fruits, and they turn over the 
stones to look for insects and such food underneath, ft is striking thus to see 
monkeys roaming about on open moorland, where there are no trees. 
“ The track of the baboons on the sand is unmistakable. The foot makes 
a mark where the animal has been galloping, just like that of a child’s foot; 
the fore-limb makes a mark not half so deeply indented, the hand being used 
merely to touch on, as it were, to prepare a fresh spring with the feet. I found the 
skeleton of one of the baboons in a cave at Cape Point. The animal had evidently 
crawled into the cave to die.” 
Mrs. A. Martin, in Home Life on an Ostrich Farm, also gives an excellent 
description of the habits of the chacma in the Cape district, from which the 
following extracts are taken: “ On mountain excursions,” writes this lady, “ you 
frequently hear his surly bark, and sometimes see him looking out defiantly at you 
from behind a rock or bush, where possibly you have disturbed him in the midst of 
an exciting lizard-hunt, or careful investigation of loose stones in search of the 
centipedes, scorpions, and beetles hidden beneath. These creatures, uninviting 
though they appear to us, are among his favourite dainties, and he catches them 
with wonderful dexterity. In the silence of night his voice is so distinctly audible 
from the homestead that you would imagine him to be close by, though in reality 
he is far off in one of the kloofs of the mountains. One night, as we strolled up 
and down near the house, enjoying the bright moonlight, a loud chorus of distant 
baboons, to which we were listening, was suddenly interrupted, evidently by the 
spring of a hungry leopard, the moment’s silence being followed by the agonised 
and prolonged yells of the victim. ... No vegetable poison has the slightest effect 
on the baboon’s iron constitution; and, indeed, if there exists any poison at all 
capable of killing him, it is quite certain that, with his superior intelligence, he 
would be far too artful to take it; and when the fiat for his destruction has gone 
forth, a well-organised attack has to be made on him with dogs and guns. He can 
show fight, too, and the dogs must be well trained and have the safety of numbers 
to enable them to face him ; for in fighting he has the immense advantage of hands, 
with which he seizes a dog and holds him fast, while he inflicts a fatal bite through 
the loins. Indeed, for either dog or man, coming to close quarters with Adonis [as 
the chacma is ironically called by the Boers] is no trifling matter. One of our 
