38 
THE KILIM A-NJAB 0 EXPEDITION. 
Lemuroid), and a handsome monkey, the Colobus Kirlcii C 
This latter, as its name indicates, was brought to light 
by Sir John Kirk; it was also extinguished by his 
means. Like most great men who have helped to 
extend the British Empire, Sir John has one dark blot 
on his escutcheon. Warren Hastings exterminated the 
Bohillas, Governor Eyre was accused of too summarily 
suppressing the Maroons; Sir John Kirk, more, perhaps, 
in the interests of British science than of British rule, 
has entirely destroyed an innocent species of monkey. 
The Colobus Kirlcii had disappeared from nearly every 
part of the island of Zanzibar, but a rumour prevailed 
that it still lingered in a clump of forest as yet unvisited 
by hunters. Thither Sir John sent his chasseurs to 
report on the monkey’s existence. After a week’s 
absence they returned, triumph illumining their swarthy 
lineaments. “ Well, did you find them ?” asked the 
British Consul-General. “ Yes,” replied the men with 
glee, “and we killed them everyone!” Wherewith 
twelve monkey corpses were flung upon the floor, and 
Colobus Kirlcii joined the Dodo, the Auk, the Bhytina 
and the Moa in the limbo of species extinguished by 
the act of man. 
When Sir John Kirk gets conscience-troubled, and 
the manes of the avenging Colobi (as negroes would 
believe) tamper with his health; when Zanzibar gets 
stuffy and feverish, and the official routine tryingly 
monotonous : he steals away, often on foot, to a little 
paradise he has created among the groves of Mbweni, 
a tiny settlement on the coast of the island. Here he 
lives a life that is to him ideally happy. He chats with 
his tenants, who lead Arcadian lives of nothing to do 
and plenty to eat; he wanders in a shooting-coat amid 
the groves of coco-palms and the clumps of pandanus 
