160 
THE KILIMA NJARO EXREDITION 
bearing several live monkeys for sale. The poor 
creatures are tightly tied to forked sticks, and are so 
bound with withes and strips' of bast that they can 
only grind their teeth in impotent rage. I do not 
really want them, as they are of a very common 
species, but to encourage the people to search for and 
bring me live things, I buy them for a small amount 
of doth. Then the canines of the savage males are 
docked, and the monkeys are tied round the hips with 
leathern thongs fastened to tree-trunks, and then 
relieved of their fetters and released. Whereon, of 
course, they career about at the length of their tether, 
vainly hoping to escape. Strange to say, they will 
all pause in their wild gyrations to eat bananas or 
other food that is thrown to them. (In the night, 
however, all escape, by gnawing resolutely through 
the leather bands which keep them in captivity.) 
When the monkeys are disposed of there is still half 
an hour or so before sunset, so I induce the natives to 
sit at my feet and instruct me in their language. Ah ! 
If my readers knew how difficult it is to collect an ac¬ 
curate vocabulary they would be little disposed to 
blame travellers from savage regions who return with¬ 
out linguistic information. Think how you have to deal 
with people who have not the faintest conception of 
what you are about, except that it somehow has to do 
with magic, and is therefore not altogether lawful. 
You are without an interpreter, and can only hold up 
objects at first, and imply, half by gesture, that you 
want to know their names. Then as to more intricate 
questions, what weary work it is to elicit information, 
and how delighted one feels when some important 
doubt is solved, or a new explanation is unconsciously 
offered of some puzzling phenomena. The language 
