Lady Anne Barnard pleads for the Baboons.
Lady Anne Barnard, whose name as the writer of "Auld Robin Gray" is familiar to every one who knows that most pathetic ballad, spent five years with her husband at the Cape (1797-1802). Her journal letters to her sisters are most amusing, and full of interesting observations.[11] After describing "Musquito-hunting" with her husband, she writes:—"In return, I endeavoured to effect a treaty of peace for the baboons, who are apt to come down from the mountain in little troops to pillage our garden of the fruit with which the trees are loaded. I told him he would be worse than Don Carlos if he refused the children of the sun and the soil the use of what had descended from ouran-outang to ouran-outang; but, alas! I could not succeed. He had pledged himself to the gardener,[12] to the slaves, and all the dogs, not to baulk them of their sport; so he shot a superb man-of-the-mountain one morning, who was marauding, and electrified himself the same moment, so shocked was he at the groan given by the poor creature as he limped off the ground. I do not think I shall hear of another falling a sacrifice to Barnard's gun; they come too near the human race" (p. 408).
In another letter she says (p. 391), "The best way to get rid of them is to catch one, whip him, and turn him loose; he skips off chattering to his comrades, and is extremely angry, but none of them return the season this is done. I have given orders, however, that there may be no whipping."