Léon Gozlan

“ Karabouffi the First, warned of my arrival by the chattering of my custodians, rushed up to me. The sight of the hated baboon made me feel timid, more timid, indeed, than usual, and what added in some degree to my fear was seeing him covered from head to foot with feathers. The sight of this ape, transformed as it were, to all appearances, into a bird, naturally enough filled me at first with great surprise. ”

“ But, after having ascended many creeks, many little gulfs, on the banks of which the banyans displayed their rich green foliage, I not only met with not a single inhabitant, neither black, brown, yellow, nor copper-coloured—but, during the long journey which I had performed, from five o’clock in the morning until noon, at which hour the burning heat poured down by the sun on my poor head forced me to halt, I had seen neither junk, nor canoe, nor any kind of implement, no fragments of articles in common use among beings of the slightest intelligence; in a word, no single trace of man. ”

“ I pitied the poor chimpanzee, who had evidently been torn apart from the loving Mococo by the detestable Karabouffi. Karabouffi regarded her as his own. But Saïmira was not one of those miserable creatures who, in order to wear a few pearls on their foreheads and a piece of velvet over their shoulders, sell their youth and beauty, their lips and heart, when they have already given their heart to another. And I could see that although she was present in all her youth and charms, her thoughts were wandering around the iron cage, the prison bars of the unfortunate Mococo. ”

“ I had merely to copy the grimaces and contortions which I had just witnessed, that was all. Alas! what misery the vanquished are called upon to endure! Could human degradation sink below this? To be obliged to imitate an ape! The colour rose to my face. I commenced my performance; but who can tell what I endured? Every time that my manly dignity checked me in the midst of a somersault, at that very same instant the sinewy tail of the mandrill caught me a blow in the face. Courage, Polydorus! courage! ”

“ The countryman was struck dumb, and felt his hair stand on end with affright. There he sat, as though the terrible head of Medusa had thrown its spell over him. His face, which had become the colour of lead from superstitious fear, appeared to amuse the brute not a little. At length Tommy had looked at the countryman long enough; his sharp glance fell upon the bright thalers on the table, and he was just stretching out his hand to appropriate some, when something he considered still more desirable—namely, the butter-dish—caught his eye. ”

“ An all-ruling Providence has ordered man to tread on the surface of the earth, the eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, and the monkey and squirrel to inhabit the trees: still these may change their relative situations without feeling much inconvenience; but the sloth is doomed to spend his whole life in the trees; and what is more extraordinary, not upon the branches, like the squirrel and the monkey, but under them. ”

“ I could have been as happy as a man has the right to be in a position so strange as mine if it had not been that this skin was constantly threatening to give way. In all other respects, tranquil in my undisputed sovereignty, I felt almost the joy of a released captive in my close association with Nature in her most primitive form—an association for which mankind are designed, and for which, when sated with an artificial state of existence, they are always longing in order that they may grow young again. ”

“ This elegant sapajou, young, agreeable, and well made, who even passed for the son of Karabouffi’s prime minister, was dying with love, the idiot! at the feet—at the big feet, too—of an insignificant-looking monkey with a pug nose, and as yellow and shrivelled as any Egyptian mummy. All this was absurd enough, still no one will pretend to say that the same kind of ridiculous fooleries are not constantly indulged in by people moving in the most refined society. ”

“ Park, forest, and promenades have been suffered to run wild, and the shady seats, with their magnificent views, extending through long arched avenues of green beech-trees, have been partially covered with the grass and weeds that have overgrown them. But the quiet lake with the Monkeys’ monument, the gigantic trees, the grottoes and hermitages, the viaduct and the simple Mausoleum, overshadowed by oaks, all still exist, and are gradually becoming developed in the light mist which legends and traditions spread around the memorials of bygone times. ”

“ The children of the desert, with their lynx-like eyes, had just discovered a human form beneath the thick foliage of the island palm-tree, and they resorted to the most energetic gestures in order to make the botanist see it too. But Von Thorigkeit could think of nothing but the grandeur of his discovery and the beauty of his drawing. He paid no attention to the gestures of the Arabs, and thought only of the sensation that would be produced in the learned world by the Von Thorigkeit palm. ”

“ I regret to say that the Pig-tailed Macaques (Macacus nemestrinus) are dead. They were, perhaps, the most amusing denizens of the Monkey House, with unrivalled capabilities of planning and executing mischief, and always having so comical an air about them that even the sufferer from their misdeeds could not be angry with them. I hope that new specimens will arrive, when they may be recognised by the peculiarity from which they derive their name, their slender, short tails bearing a singular resemblance to the caudal extremities of the porcine tribe. ”

“ There remained to me the choice of being crushed under the remains of the verandah or of precipitating myself into the midst of this crowd of savage and exasperated beings, maddened with the thoughts of vengeance, intoxicated with the idea of a victory which they knew very well could not escape them. I decided to die like a man. I seized hold of a Malay poignard with one hand and a revolver in the other, and leaped into the centre of the arena. ”

“ I congratulated myself on my success; the candles had ceased to play any further an incendiary part in the apish orgie. No sooner, however, had they done this than they appeared to recall to mind that they had seen the room lighted up in this fashion before—doubtlessly on some occasion when the vice-admiral gave a soirée or a ball. They exchanged glances with each other, and in the twinkling of an eye climbed up on one another’s backs and placed the candles in the chandeliers and in the ormolu brackets fixed against the walls. ”

“ When we found any fruit or roots unknown to my Hottentots, we never touched them until my dear Kees had first tasted them: if it refused them we judged them to be either disagreeable or dangerous, and threw them away.
“An ape has one peculiarity which distinguishes it from all other animals, and brings it very near to man. It has received from nature an equal share of greediness and curiosity: though destitute of appetite, it tastes without necessity every kind of food that is offered to it; and always lays its paw upon everything it finds within its reach. ”

“ Although some among them were already bald, and others displayed the white hair of old age, that natural sign of prudence and badge of respect, they did not the less rival their fellows in obsequiousness towards their master. If he chanced to utter a cry, they were the apes that, in the fullness of their sympathy, cried the loudest. If he scratched his thigh, in a moment of deep thought, they hastened to almost flay their legs by tearing at them with their claws. ”

“ All the vervets, all the old followers of the mandrill whose place I occupied, were brought from exile and disgrace. Some old ourang-outangs, some baboons of the late reign, some old Dianas, wearing cocked hats crowned with big plumes stolen from Vice-Admiral Campbell’s station, murmured behind their beards. But I took no notice of their suppressed disgust. I knew the step that I was taking was a politic one, for it conciliated the others. One is always strong when one is in the right. ”

“ Happiness is altogether relative; and, for a time, Dummkopf was happy indeed. He was proud of his inventions, and from the height of his palm-tree looked down upon Robinson Crusoe with contempt.
As he was reflecting calmly on his happiness he saw the monster, no longer horizontal, at the foot of the tree. He was making one last endeavour to take it by storm, but failing in the attempt had forthwith recourse to sapping and mining. He went to work with the air of a crocodile who had made up his mind, and who had said to himself, “There must be an end to this.” ”

“ She moves about with ease and agility, making no rapid or sudden rushes, but quietly walking about the cage, being perfectly indifferent as to the position in which the body may be. She can walk steadily upon the smooth floor, she can walk upon the rough branches of the tree which is laid across her cage, or she can walk along the roof of her house, hanging suspended like the sloth. And she appears to be equally at ease in either attitude, and walks with equal adroitness. ”

“ It has been well said that the zeal of zoologists to give names to species and groups is the greatest bane of Natural History, a constant hindrance to our own progress, and a subject of well-deserved reproach from the public; if we would all make it a rule not to publish the name of a supposed new species for a year after its discovery, and until a thorough search had been made for previous records, our own glory might be less apparent, but we should be more considerate of our fellows, and more surely, though more slowly, advance the knowledge of natural objects. ”

“ Thus armed with deadly poison, and hungry as the hyæna, he ranges through the forest in quest of the wild beasts’ track. No hound can act a surer part. Without clothes to fetter him, or shoes to bind his feet, he observes the footsteps of the game, where a European eye could not discern the smallest vestige. He pursues it through all its turns and windings with astonishing perseverance, and success generally crowns his efforts. The animal, after receiving the poisoned arrow, seldom retreats two hundred paces before it drops. ”

“ This courtyard received both air and [84] light through an immense awning of rose-coloured cloth, filled out by the wind, and enjoyed a perpetual freshness arising from a natural basin of water which was situated in the very centre of the square. Luxuriant turf, with beds of shrubs and flowers, formed a border to this refreshing pool. Tied together in bouquets by a kind of weed, a tropical hair-like plant, bamboos grew with their delicate trunks and glossy foliage to a height of sixty feet. In India this cool part of a house, where one really manages to breathe, is called the verandah. ”

“ The return of the bats to their diurnal retreat, which was in the thatch above my hammock, informed me that the sun was now fast approaching to the eastern horizon. I arose, in languor and in pain, the pulse at one hundred and twenty. I took ten grains of calomel and a scruple of jalap, and drank during the day large draughts of tea, weak and warm. The physic did its duty; but there was no remission of fever or headache, though the pain of the back was less acute. I was saved the trouble of keeping the room cool, as the wind beat in at every quarter. ”

“ If the naturalists who have written the history of the sloth had gone into the wilds, in order to examine his haunts and economy, they would not have drawn the foregoing conclusions; they would have learned, that though all other quadrupeds may be described while resting on the ground, the sloth is an exception to this rule, and that his history must be written while he is in the tree.
“This singular animal is destined by nature to be produced, to live, and to die in the trees; and to do justice to him, naturalists must examine him in this his upper element. ”

“ I open my eyes and perceive this crowd of apes all flying off, in the same direction, with the rapidity of a cannon-ball. Thousands upon thousands of tails streak the horizon. These at length disappear, and fainter and fainter grows that chattering noise with which they have sought to excite one another to triple their speed, till at last it sounds merely like a tingling in the ear when one is troubled with a rush of blood to the head. The air is pure, the earth has already recovered its serenity, as after the disappearance of some fetid mist ”

“ I have never regretted so much as I then did, that Providence had not reserved to us, for seasons of difficulty, the means of living on grass and plants like animals of the herbivorous species, or endowed us like others with the faculty of seizing our prey. In the primitive ages of the world we were endowed perhaps with a less exclusive organisation; but, however this may have been, I was dying with hunger in the midst of a paradise of plants, ferns, and roots, which a horse or an ox would have considered the rarest of delicacies. ”

“ I became convinced with Buffon, who has written so many admirable pages on natural history, that if, instead of beating and ill-treating them and making them constantly suffer, we were only to study them, and take a real and active interest in such an occupation, we should penetrate an immense and unexplored world of ideas and sensations, [20] where as yet we can be hardly said to have placed our feet.
Vice-Admiral Campbell was so delighted with the grimaces, the tricks, the eccentricities, and I must also add the ferocity, of my boarders, that he immediately purchased an ape and a monkey. ”