d animals are among their very
earliest monuments, viz. 2000 or 3000 years B.C. Mr. Mansfield
Parkyns, who passed many years in Abyssinia and the countries of the
Upper Nile, writes me word in answer to my inquiries;--

"I am sure that negroes often capture and keep alive wild animals. I
have bought them and received them as presents--wild cats, jackals,
panthers, the wild dog, the two best lions now in the Zoological
Gardens, monkeys innumerable and of all sorts, and mongoose. I cannot
say that I distinctly recollect any pets among the _lowest_ orders
of men that I met with, such as the Denkas, but I am sure they exist,
and in this way. When I was on the White Nile and at Khartoum, very
few merchants went up the White Nile; none had stations. They were
little known to the natives; but none returned without some live
animal or bird which they had procured from them. While I was at
Khartoum, there came an Italian wild beast showman, after the
Wombwell style. He made a tour of the towns up to Doul and Fazogly,
Kordofan and the peninsula, and collected a large number of animals.
Thus my opinion distinctly is, that negroes do keep wild animals
alive. _I am sure of it_; though I can only vaguely recollect them
in one or two cases. I remember some chief in Abyssinia who had a
pet lion which he used to tease, and I have often seen monkeys about
huts."

[Equatorial Africa.]--The most remarkable instance I have met with
in modern Africa is the account of a menagerie that existed up to
the beginning of the reign of the present king of the Wahumas, on
the shores of Lake Nyanza. Suna, the great despot of that country,
reigned till 1857. Captains Burton and Speke were in the
neighbourhood in the following year, and Captain Burton thus
describes (_Journal R. G. Soc._, xxix. 282) the report he received
of Suna's collection:--

"He had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar
beasts of disport; he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen
albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty, that even a cock of
peculiar form or colour would have been forwarded by its owner to
feed his eyes."

Captain Speke, in his subsequent journey to the Nile, passed many
months at Uganda, as the guest of Suna's youthful successor, M'tese.
The fame of the old menagerie was fresh when Captain Speke was there.
He wrote to me as follows concerning it:--

"I was told Suna kept buffaloes, antelopes, and animals of all
colours' (meaning 's