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]]
21. THE BABOON SHEPHERD.—[A Tale.]
(From Sir James E. Alexander’s “Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa,” vol. ii. pp. 229, 230.)
The Namaquas say that, not long ago, a man had brought up a young Baboon, and had made it his shepherd. It remained by the flock all day in the field, and at night drove them home to the kraal, riding on the back of one of the goats, which brought up the rear. The Baboon had the milk of one goat allowed to it, and it sucked that one only, and guarded the milk of the others from the children. It also got a little meat from its master. It held the office of shepherd for twelve moons, and then was unfortunately killed in a tree by a Leopard. [[77]]
[1] With reference to the Baboon’s great power of distancing his pursuers. [↑]