(From Sir James E. Alexander’s “Expedition of Discovery into the
Interior of Africa,” vol. ii. pp. 234, 235.)
The children belonging to a kraal were playing at some little distance
from the huts with bows and arrows; in the evening they all returned
home, save one, a boy of five or six years old, who lingered behind,
and was soon surrounded by a troop of baboons, who carried him up a
mountain.
The people turned out to recover the boy, and for days they hunted
after him in vain; he was nowhere to be seen; the baboons also had left
the neighbourhood.
A year after this had occurred, a mounted hunter came to the kraal from
a distance, and told the people that he had crossed at such a place the
spoor of baboons, along with the footmarks of a child. The people went
to the place which the hunter had indicated, and they soon saw what
they were in search of, viz., the boy, sitting on a pinnacle of rock,
in company with a large baboon. The moment the people approached, the
baboon took up the boy, and scampered off with him; but, after a close
pursuit, the boy was recovered. He seemed quite wild, and tried to run
away to the baboons again; however, he was brought back to the kraal,
and when he recovered his speech, he said that the baboons had been
very kind to him; that they ate scorpions and spiders themselves, but
brought him roots, gum, and wild raisins, seeing that he did not touch
the two first-named delicacies, and that they always allowed him to
drink first at the waters.