It may be of interest to the reader to know the manner in which I have pursued the study of monkeys in a state of nature, and the means employed to that end. I shall therefore give a brief outline of my life in a cage in the heart of an African jungle in order to watch those denizens of the forest, when free from all restraint.
After devoting much time for several years to the study of the speech and habits of monkeys in captivity, I formulated a plan of going into their native haunts, to study them in a state of freedom.
In the course of my labours up to that time, I had found out that monkeys of the highest physical type had also a higher type of speech than those of inferior kinds. In accord with this fact, it was logical to infer that the anthropoid apes, being next to man in the scale of nature, must have the faculty of speech developed in a corresponding degree.
As the chief object of my studies was to learn the language of monkeys, the great apes appeared to be the best subjects for that purpose, so I turned my attention to them.
The gorilla was said to be the most like man, and the chimpanzee next. There were none of the former in captivity, and but few of the latter, and they were kept under conditions that forbade all efforts to do anything in that line.
As the gorilla and chimpanzee could both be found in the same section of tropical Africa, I selected that as the field of operation, and began to prepare for a journey there to carry out the task I had assumed.
The part selected was along the equator, and south of it, about two degrees. The locality is infested with fevers, insects, serpents and wild beasts of divers kinds. To ignore such dangers would be folly, but there was no way to see these apes in their freedom, except to go and live among them.
To lessen, in a degree, the dangers incurred by such an adventure, I devised a cage of steel wire, woven into a lattice with a mesh one inch and a half wide. This was made in twenty-four panels, three feet three inches square, set in a frame of narrow iron strips. Each side of the panels was provided with half-hinges, so arranged as to fit any side of every other panel. These could be quickly bolted together with small iron rods, and, when so bolted, formed a cage of cubical shape, six feet six inches square.
Any one or more of the panels could be swung open as a door, and the whole structure was painted a dingy green, so that when erected in the forest it was almost invisible among the foliage.
While it was not strong enough to withstand a prolonged siege, it afforded a certain immunity from being surprised by the fierce and stealthy beasts of the jungle, and would allow the occupant time to kill an assailant before the wires would yield to an attack from anything except an elephant. Of course it was no protection against them, but as they rarely ever attack a man unless provoked to it, there was little danger from that source; besides, there were not many of those huge brutes in the immediate part in which my strange domicile was set up.