hat, though she climbed about the cliffs
with the other monkeys, at a certain hour a little before sundown they
used to put her with one or two other much smaller ones into a little
cave, while the family went off somewhere to get food, to the mealie
fields, I suppose. Then I got an idea that I would catch this white
baboon and bring it home. But of course I could not do this by myself,
so I took a Hottentot--a very clever man when he was not drunk--who
lived on the stead, into my confidence. He was called Hendrik, and was
very fond of me; but for a long while he would not listen to my plan,
because he said that the babyans would kill us. At last I bribed him
with a knife that had four blades, and one afternoon we started, Hendrik
carrying a stout sack made of hide, with a rope running through it so
that the mouth could be drawn tight.

"Well, we got to the place, and, hiding ourselves carefully in the trees
at the foot of the kloof, watched the baboons playing about and grunting
to each other, till at length, according to custom, they took the white
one and three other little babies and put them in the cave. Then the old
man came out, looked carefully round, called to his family, and went off
with them over the brow of the kloof. Now very slowly and cautiously we
crept up over the rocks till we came to the mouth of the cave and looked
in. All the four little baboons were fast asleep, with their backs
towards us, and their arms round each other's necks, the white one being
in the middle. Nothing could have been better for our plans. Hendrik,
who by this time had quite entered into the spirit of the thing, crept
along the cave like a snake, and suddenly dropped the mouth of the hide
bag over the head of the white baboon. The poor little thing woke up and
gave a violent jump which caused it to vanish right into the bag. Then
Hendrik pulled the string tight, and together we knotted it so that
it was impossible for our captive to escape. Meanwhile the other baby
baboons had rushed from the cave screaming, and when we got outside they
were nowhere to be seen.

"'Come on, Missie,' said Hendrik; 'the babyans will soon be back.' He
had shouldered the sack, inside of which the white baboon was kicking
violently, and screaming like a child. It was dreadful to hear its
shrieks.

"We scrambled down the sides of the kloof and ran for home as fast as
we could manage. When we were near the waterfall, and within about three
hundred