from it a
troop of elephants.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[386-1] A vley is a swamp or morass.

[386-2] The sassaby is a large African antelope, resembling the
hartbeest, but having regularly curved horns.

SOME CLEVER MONKEYS[402-*]

_By_ THOMAS BELT

On the dryer ridges near the Artigua River, a valuable timber tree, the
"nispera," as it is called by the native, is common. It grows to a great
size, and its timber is almost indestructible; so that we used it in the
construction of all our permanent works. White ants do not eat it, nor,
excepting when first cut, and before it is barked, do any of the
wood-boring beetles. It bears a round fruit about the size of an apple,
hard and heavy when green, and at this time is much frequented by the
large yellowish-brown spider-monkey, which roams over the tops of the
trees in bands of from ten to twenty. Sometimes they lay quiet until I
was passing underneath, when, shaking a branch of the nispera tree, they
would send down a shower of the hard round fruit; but fortunately I was
never struck by them. As soon as I looked up, they would commence
yelping and barking, and putting on the most threatening gestures,
breaking off pieces of branches and letting them fall, and shaking off
more fruit, but never throwing anything, simply letting it fall. Often,
when on lower trees, they would hang from the branches two or three
together, holding on to each other and to the branch with their fore
feet and long tail, whilst their hind feet hung down, all the time
making threatening gestures and cries.

Sometimes a female would be seen carrying a young one on its back, to
which it clung with legs and tail, the mother making its way along the
branches, and leaping from tree to tree, apparently but little
encumbered with its baby. A large black and white eagle is said to prey
upon them, but I never saw one, although I was constantly falling in
with troops of the monkeys. Don Francisco Velasquez, one of our
officers, told me that one day he heard a monkey crying out in the
forest for more than two hours, and at last, going out to see what was
the matter, he saw a monkey on a branch and an eagle beside it trying to
frighten it to turn its back, when it would have seized it. The monkey,
however, kept its face to its foe, and the eagle did not care to engage
with it in this position, but probably would have tired it out.
Velasquez fired at the eagle, and frightened it away. I