He Has A Short, Curved Tail, Sable-Colored Fur
Darkening Down His Back, And A Most Repulsive, Treacherous, And
Ferocious Countenance.
He is fierce, but likes or at all events obeys
his owner, who held him with a rope fifty feet long.
At present he is
only half tame, and would go back to the jungle if he were liberated.
He was sent up a cocoa-nut tree which was heavily loaded with nuts in
various stages of ripeness and unripeness, going up in surly fashion,
looking round at intervals and shaking his chain angrily. When he got
to the top he shook the fronds and stalks, but no nuts fell, and he
chose a ripe one, and twisted it round and round till its tenacious
fibers gave way, and then threw it down and began to descend, thinking
he had done enough, but on being spoken to he went to work again with
great vigor, picked out all the ripe nuts on the tree, twisted them all
off, and then came down in a thoroughly bad, sulky, temper. He was
walking erect, and it seemed discourteous not to go and thank him for
all his hard toil.
As I write I see a fascinating sight: three black apes sitting under
the roof in such a position that I can only see their faces, and they
are all leaning their chins on a beam, and with their wrinkled faces
and gray beards are looking exactly like - - -. It is most interesting
to be among wild beasts, which, though tame, or partly so, are not in
captivity, and to see their great sagacity and their singular likeness
and unlikeness to us.
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