“Seeing me,” says a South American traveller, speaking of a monkey, “nearly on the bank of the river in a canoe, the creature made a halt from skipping after his companions, and, being perched on a branch that hung over the water, examined me with attention and the strongest marks of curiosity, no doubt taking me for a giant of his own species, while he chattered prodigiously, and kept dancing and shaking the bough on which he rested with incredible strength and agility. At this time I laid my piece to my shoulder, and brought him down from the tree into the stream; but may I never again be a witness to such a scene! The miserable animal was not dead, but mortally wounded. I seized him by the tail, and taking him in both my hands to end his torments, swung him round and hit his head against the side of the canoe; but the poor creature still continuing alive, and looking at me in the most affecting manner that can be conceived, I knew no other means of ending his murder than to hold him under the water till he was drowned, while my heart sickened on his account, for his dying little eyes still continued to follow me with seeming reproach, till their light gradually forsook them, and the wretched animal expired. I felt so much on this occasion that I could neither taste of him nor his companions when they were dressed, though I saw that they afforded to some others a delicious repast.”
The repentant writer and his party were driven to the commission of the act for want of fresh provisions; and many of the family are considered most excellent eating—by those who can get over the appearance of the animal and of its bones when cooked. There are not many, however, who can sit down to a dish of monkeys without feeling that it is rather a cannibalish proceeding.
It will be obvious, when the leafy home of this restless race is considered, that it is of the utmost consequence that the infant monkey should be protected as much as possible from a fall. Accordingly, the prevailing instinct of a young one is, in sailor’s language, to hold on. It clings to its mother with the greatest tenacity; and, to enable it to do this, considerable strength is thrown into the extremities, the anterior limbs especially.
Le Vaillant, in his introduction to his first voyage, gives the following curious instance of the exhibition of this instinct under extraordinary circumstances. When living in Dutch Guiana, at Paramaribo, where he was born, and where he had already, though very young, formed a collection of insects, the future traveller and his party in one of their excursions had killed a female monkey.
“As she carried on her back a young one, which had not been wounded, we took them both along with us; and when we returned to the plantation, my ape had not quitted the shoulders of its mother. It clung so closely to them, that I was obliged to have the assistance of a negro to disengage them; but scarcely was it separated from her, when, like a bird, it darted upon a wooden block that stood near, covered with my father’s peruke, which it embraced with its four paws, nor could it be compelled to quit its position. Deceived by its instinct, it still imagined itself to be on the back of its mother, and under her protection. As it seemed perfectly at ease on the peruke, I resolved to suffer it to remain, and to feed it there with goat’s milk. It continued in its error for three weeks, but after that period, emancipating itself from its own authority, it quitted the fostering peruke, and by its amusing tricks became the friend and favourite of the whole family.”
Though it is difficult to repress a smile at the idea of a monkey clinging to a full-bottom on a wig-block and fancying it its mamma, the story, as it begins mournfully with the slaughter of the poor mother, ends tragically for her unhappy offspring: it died a terrible death—the result, indeed, of its own mischievous voracity, but in agonies frightful to think of:—
“I had, however,” continues Le Vaillant, “without suspecting it, introduced the wolf among my flocks. One morning, on entering my chamber, the door of which I had been so imprudent as to leave open, I beheld my unworthy pupil making a hearty breakfast on my noble collection. In the first transports of my passion I resolved to strangle it in my arms; but rage and fury soon gave place to pity, when I perceived that its voraciousness had exposed it to the most cruel punishment. In eating the beetles it had swallowed some of the pins on which they were fixed, and though it made a thousand efforts to throw them up, all its exertions were in vain. The torture which it suffered made me forget the devastation it had occasioned; I thought only of affording it relief; but neither my tears, nor all the art of my father’s slaves, whom I called from all quarters with loud cries, were able to preserve its life.”
To return to the instinct exemplified in the first part of this melancholy tale: we remember to have seen a female monkey and her young one in the cage of a menagerie—and a small cage too. In this case the instinct—and it was a good example of the wide difference between that quality and reason—both on the part of the mother and her offspring, was just as strong as it could have been in their native forests. The young one clung as tightly, and the mother showed as much anxiety lest it should be dashed to pieces by a fall whilst she was sitting at the bottom of her cage, which rested on the ground, as if she had been swinging with the breeze upon the tree top.
The docility and apparent intelligence which are so strongly marked in the Chimpanzee and Orang, and which have given rise to such exaggerated ideas of their intellect, have been always observed in youthful animals; while untamable ferocity and brutality—in short, the very reverse of the amiable and interesting qualities which have been so much dwelt on—have been uniformly the concomitants of age. The old anthropoid apes have “foreheads villanous low.” Accordingly, though there may be exceptions to the general rule—and that there are we shall show—the stories told of our friends, whether by ancients or moderns, are hardly ever in their favour. There may be a certain degree of cunning, and even of accomplishment, in the monkey of whom the tale is told; but, in nine cases out of ten, the laugh is either at his expense, or he is only saved from ridicule by some horrible catastrophe. From the earliest ages down to the time of that wan-chancy creature Major Weir, Sir Robert Redgauntlet’s great ill-favoured jackanape, the whole tribe have been regarded as unlucky, meddling beings; the Major came to an untimely end, as every one knows, and where he went, or, at least, was expected, after the breath was out of his body, is pretty plain.
Either, like Ælian’s ape, the mimic, in its zeal for imitation, makes the trifling mistake of plunging a child into boiling water instead of cold, or it is taken by the hunter’s stratagem of washing his face in its presence, and then leaving, by way of a lotion for the poor animal that has been watching his motions, some of the best bird-lime, with which it belutes its eyes till they are sealed up; or a parcel of shell-snails are placed round it, in the midst of which it sits like a fool, not daring to stir for fear.