These Baboons live a very peculiar life in the neighbourhood of Angola, a Portuguese settlement on the western coast of Africa. Instead of delighting in the dense woods and glades of the tropical country close by, where fruit, nuts, and roots exist in vast abundance, and where water is most plentiful, they prefer to inhabit a hilly district which is much cut up in all directions by deep dry gullies, and grand rocky ravines. The country is badly supplied with vegetation, and water is very scarce. There are a few prickly shrubs, a few roots of grass, and certain kinds of thick club-stemmed dwarf shrubs all bearing a few leaves, only during the few months of the year in which rain falls. During the rest of the year nothing is seen but bare rock and scorched leafless firewood. At distances far apart, water only exists in deep dry gullies under the sand. In the neighbourhood of the rivers on that part of the coast vegetation is most luxuriant, but the Monkeys prefer the arid country, living principally on the root and stem of one of the most extraordinary plants in the world—the Welwitschia.
SKULL OF THE ANUBIS BABOON.
The dog-like jaws of these Apes are very useful in gnawing the exposed roots of these plants, and they manage to nibble them just as a Sheep does a turnip. When thirsty they seek for water, and in company with Zebras and other animals excavate or scrape holes in the sand until it is found over the hard sub-rock.
They are very wary, and usually assemble in troops of fifteen or more, and when they move about they send forward one or two who act as scouts, and give signals to the main body about what is going on in front. Some time since a man opened a well at some copper-mines on the hills, and he soon found that the Baboons knew what he had done, for they came down to drink in bodies of thirty or forty.
They run very fast and on all-fours in a kind of sideway gallop, and the little ones ride on the backs of their dams, holding very tight and safely. It appears that there is some discipline going on amongst them when they are in bodies, for if a scout should happen not to signal danger or whatever is interesting to the whole band, the rest set upon him, and give him a good thrashing.
Some similar or perhaps the same kind of Baboon lives a more pleasant life than these in another district in the neighbourhood of Angola. There are some most extraordinary rocks which are situated some two hundred or more miles in the interior, and were mentioned more than two centuries ago in the books of missionaries and other travellers as great wonders of nature. They are the Black Rocks of Pungo Andongo. These rocks, rising on the outskirts of a district celebrated for its marvellous fertility and richness of vegetation, are arid-looking on the top, and dark, partly from the natural tint of the stone which is composed of gneiss. They encircle a valley, and extend over about ten square miles, being rugged, or in the form of gigantic pillars. Sloping away from the valley region with its great forests, they present precipitous sides towards it, and are broken up by ravines.
At first sight the stone of the precipices appears to be sterile or poor in vegetation, but the nearer the margin of the high land is approached the more luxuriant it becomes, the more flowery the open fields, and the more numerous the crystal brooks. Cultivation goes on here, and grain is carefully sewn, maize especially. In other parts of the valley a dense dark-green primeval forest reaches close to the precipitous and partly sterile walls of rock. The upper part of the precipices and rocks is, however, bare of any shrub or tree-like vegetation, and looks arid enough during the greater part of the year. Now all this is of great importance to the Baboon. He lives on the top of the rocks in hollows and under ledges of stone, and safely placed there in inaccessible places, he surveys the fertile scene below him, and selects the choicest of the fields for the supply of his food. Probably there would be no such oasis in the country were it not for a very curious plant which really gives the name to the “Black Rocks,” and which clothes the hills during the wet season. And if there were no fertile valley the Baboon would certainly not be found in this district. As the wet season progresses, the hills look blacker and blacker, their ruggedness disappears, and even the sterile faces of the precipices grow dark, and the vegetation of the valley appears to crowd up their slope. All this alteration is produced by the vigorous and indeed enormous growth of a singular plant called Scytonema. It retains much moisture within its tangles, and long after the rains have ceased to be felt and to influence the vegetation of the valley, the aridity of the district is antagonised or put off for a while by this interesting property. The Scytonema selects the bare rocks for its favourite locality, and these surround the valley with its teeming vegetation as with a great sponge, whose moisture prolongs the weeks of plant life and of active growth, and adds to a wonderful fertility. With plenty of running water, abundance of food, and a very safe shelter, the Baboons have great cause to thank the Scytonema. They flourish amongst the rocks, and are a terrible scourge to the inhabitants of the valley. Their cunning and boldness are remarkable, and are increased by their numbers. After surveying the growth of the choicest fields of Indian corn they assemble in great troops and destroy entire plantations in a single night.
THE COMMON BABOON.[66]
There is a Baboon which is much more commonly seen in menageries on the Continent than any other, and which is kept by the Arabian and Egyptian jugglers; yet it is by no means satisfactorily made out whether it is a particular species or only the young or even adult form of some one of those already described. It has a name, however, which ought to leave the identity of the creature in no doubt—it is the Common Baboon, or Cynocephalus papio. If it really comes from all the places whence it is said to be derived it lives over a vast district, and is to be found on the west or Guinea Coast inland, in Abyssinia, and on the Nile further north. Sir John Kirk found them in Zambesia in Eastern Equatorial Africa, and was told that the natives held them as sacred, and preserved them, calling them “Nyam” and “Manganja.” But probably the specimens from Guinea are these of the Sphinx Baboon, those from Abyssinia are the females of the Hamadryas or of Geladas and possibly there may be some in this district which really are true Papio Baboons.