20. THE LOST CHILD.—[A Tale.]
(From Sir James E. Alexander’s “Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa,” vol. ii. pp. 234, 235.)
The children belonging to a kraal were playing at some little distance from the huts with bows and arrows; in the evening they all returned home, save one, a boy of five or six years old, who lingered behind, and was soon surrounded by a troop of baboons, who carried him up a mountain.
The people turned out to recover the boy, and for days they hunted after him in vain; he was nowhere to be seen; the baboons also had left the neighbourhood.
A year after this had occurred, a mounted hunter came to the kraal from a distance, and told the people that he had crossed at such a place the spoor of baboons, along with the footmarks of a child. The people went to the place which the hunter had indicated, and they soon saw what they were in search of, viz., the boy, sitting on a pinnacle of rock, in company with a large baboon. The moment the people [[75]]approached, the baboon took up the boy, and scampered off with him; but, after a close pursuit, the boy was recovered. He seemed quite wild, and tried to run away to the baboons again; however, he was brought back to the kraal, and when he recovered his speech, he said that the baboons had been very kind to him; that they ate scorpions and spiders themselves, but brought him roots, gum, and wild raisins, seeing that he did not touch the two first-named delicacies, and that they always allowed him to drink first at the waters. [[76]]