y of a king.

This baby is much stronger and quicker to learn than human babies; for
when he is only two days old he is able to cling to his mother, so that
she can carry him with her on her hunting trips. If he becomes too noisy
from sheer delight when she is travelling through the forest with him,
she slaps him, in an attempt to quiet him, lest the leopards get him.

At night he sleeps snugly by his mother's side in the great tree-bed,
and she never allows him to crawl out of her arms for fear that he fall
to the depths below. She loves him dearly, and watches with human
eagerness for his first tooth. He loves his mother and will stand for
hours while she dresses his hair; or lie on her breast as she rubs his
little back.

These wild-children are always ill-tempered and self-willed. No human
mother has to show more patience and love than does the nkengo mother.
She takes the greatest delight in his first efforts at climbing and
hunting, and for hours she and his admiring relatives will watch him
attempting to climb a cocoanut tree. Sometimes she will climb just
behind him to catch him if he falls or becomes frightened.

His arms soon become very powerful, for he is constantly swinging,
climbing, and exercising by hanging from a bough with one hand while he
pulls himself up with the great power of his muscles. He is able to
gather koola nuts long before his jaws are strong enough to crack them;
so his fond mother cracks them for him until his hands and mouth are
stronger. Like all babies, his ambition is to be big and strong like his
father.

Some of the apes are most intelligent and human, and, as allies to man,
are more desirable than certain of the human savages. Dr. Livingstone,
in his _Last Journals_, describes one he first discovered. "Their
teeth," he says, "are slightly human, but their canines show the beast
by their large development. The hands, or rather the fingers, are like
those of the natives. They live in communities consisting of about a
dozen individuals, and are strictly monogamous in their conjugal
relations, and vegetarian, or rather frugivorous, in their diet, their
favourite food being bananas." The natives where these apes live are
cannibals, and Dr. Livingstone says, "they are the lowest of the low."
One of their number, who had committed a great murder, offered his
grandmother "to be killed in expiation of his offence, and this
vicarious punishment was accepted as satisfactory."

Thus i