American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
"And now you might just have a look round at some of the animals.
Here," said he, as we stood before a cage of very charming monkeys,
"are some very clever little animals. They can ride horses in a
circus, they jump through hoops; in fact, they are trained exactly
like human beings, and can do almost everything but talk. I have
just sent people to Abyssinia to fetch me some big silver-gray
lion-monkeys, sometimes called hamadryads. I said just now,"
continued Mr. Hagenbeck, with a laugh, "that monkeys can't talk; and
yet I must believe in Professor Garner, for you give me any monkey,
you like to name, and I'll guarantee I'll make it talk. But you can
only do it by imitating them closely. Take, for instance, that
chimpanzee over there," continued the clever trainer, pointing to a
little animal fast asleep on a crossbar. "Now listen," he went on,
making a peculiar noise with his lips. At once the animal woke up,
jabbered a reply in chimpanzee, flew to the bars of the cage, put his
tiny paw out ready for the nuts which he knew were forthcoming.
"There," said Mr. Hagenbeck, "don't tell me monkeys can't talk."
A little farther on we came across a tiny baby elephant, two feet nine
inches in height. It was as black as coal, and had just arrived from
Singapore. It was very playful, but when I began pushing it about, as
one might roll a big beer barrel, it indulged in a fretful growling,
which much amused us. Seven beautiful elephants stood in one big
stable together, and as I admired their huge proportions and wondered
at their entire gentleness, I said to Mr. Hagenbeck, "Is it true, as
the great English circus proprietor George Sanger told me last summer,
that the Asiatic elephant is far more intelligent than its African
brother?"
"Certainly not," replied Mr. Hagenbeck. "The African elephants are
just as clever, just as gentle, just as intelligent as the Asiatic
elephants. There's no difference between them; and I ought to know,
for I have had to do with them for thirty years, and in only one year
I have imported as many as seventy-six of them."
HOW WILD BEASTS ARE CAPTURED.
Karl Hagenbeck and I stood in his beautiful gardens, beside the
enclosure in which the lions and tigers spend the long, hot summer
days so frequent in Hamburg. Most artistically this enclosure has been
made to resemble an African desert. In the foreground there are bushes
and a few small palm trees, whilst in the far-off distance there rise,
towering to a blue tropical sky, grim mountains and sun-stricken
rocks. There is thus conveyed to the mind an impression of the great
Nubian deserts--an impression whose force and reality is strengthened
by the appearance of the wild beasts themselves, basking in the heat
of the sun, or restlessly prowling about the enclosure.
"I should very much like to hear, Mr. Hagenbeck," said I, "everything
you can tell me of the way in which your wild beasts are captured."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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