carried their
human-like infants upon their shoulders as they marched along, or,
squatted upon their hams, tenderly caressed them, fondling and pressing
them against their _mammas_. Both males and females were of a tawny-red
or lion-colour; both had long beards, and the hair upon their bodies was
coarse and shaggy. Their tails were, each of them, three feet in
length; and the absence of hair on the under side of these, with the
hard, _callous_ appearance of the cuticle, showed that these appendages
were extremely prehensile. In fact, this was apparent from the manner
in which the young "held on" to their mothers; for they appeared to
retain their difficult seats as much by the grasp of their tails as by
their arms and hands.

On reaching the bank of the "arroyo" the whole troop came to a sudden
halt. One--an _aide-de-camp_, or chief pioneer, perhaps--ran forward
upon a projecting rock; and, after looking across the stream, as if
calculating its width, and then carefully examining the trees overhead,
he scampered back to the troop, and appeared to communicate with the
leader. The latter uttered a cry--evidently a command--which was
answered by many individuals in the band, and these instantly made their
appearance in front, and running forward upon the bank of the stream,
collected around the trunk of a tall cotton-wood that grew over the
narrowest part of the arroyo. After uttering a chorus of discordant
cries, twenty or thirty of them were seen to scamper up the trunk of the
cotton-wood. On reaching a high point, the foremost--a strong fellow--
ran out upon a limb, and, taking several turns of his tail around it,
slipped off and hung head downwards. The next on the limb--also a stout
one--climbed down the body of the first, and, whipping his tail tightly
around the neck and fore-arm of the latter, dropped off in his turn, and
hung head down. The third repeated this manoeuvre upon the second, and
the fourth upon the third, and so on, until the last one upon the string
rested his fore-paws upon the ground.

The living chain now commenced swinging backwards and forwards, like the
pendulum of a clock. The motion was slight at first, but gradually
increased, the lowermost monkey striking his hands violently on the
earth as he passed the tangent of the oscillating curve. Several others
upon the limbs above aided the movement. The absence of branches upon
the lower part of the tree, which we have said was a cott