To those who possess the higher instincts of humanity, it will not be thought absurd in me to confess that the conduct of these creatures awoke in me a feeling more exalted than a mere sense of kindness. It touched some chord of nature that yields a richer tone; but only those who have known such pets as I have known them can feel towards them as I have felt.
I have no desire to bias the calm judgment or bribe the sentiment of him who scorns the love of nature, by clothing these humble creatures in the garb of human dignity; but to him who is not so imbued with self-conceit as to be blind to all evidence and deaf to all reason, it must appear that they are gifted with like faculties and passions to those of man; differing in degree, but not in kind.
Moved by such conviction, who could fail to pity that poor, lone captive, in his iron cell, far from his native land, slowly dying? It may be a mere freak of sentiment that I regret not being with him to soothe and comfort his last hours, but I do regret it deeply. He had the right to expect it of me, as a duty.
Poor little Aaron! In the brief span of half a year he had seen his own mother die at the hands of the cruel hunters; he had been seized and sold into captivity; he had seen the lingering torch of life go out of the frail body of Moses; he had watched the demon of death bind his cold shackles on Elisheba; and now he had, himself, passed through the deep shadows of that ordeal.
What a sad and vast experience for one short year! He had shared with me the toils and dangers of the sea and land over many a weary mile. He seemed to feel that the death of his two friends was a common loss to us; and if there is any one thing which more than another knits the web of sympathy about two alien hearts, it is the experience of a common grief.
Thus ended the career of my kulu-kamba friend, the last of my chimpanzee pets. In him were centred many cherished hopes, but they did not perish with him, for I shall some day find another one of his kind in whom I may realise all that I had hoped for in him; but I cannot expect to find a specimen of superior qualities, for he was certainly one of the jolliest and one of the wisest of his race.
However fine and intelligent his successor may be, he can never supplant either Moses or Aaron in my affections: for these two little heroes shared with me so many of the sad vicissitudes of time and fortune that I should be an ingrate to forget them or allow the deeds of others to dim the glory of their memory.
I have all of them preserved, and when I look at them the past comes back to me, and I recall so vividly the scenes in which they played the leading rôles—it is like a panorama of their lives.