We reached our own settlement one day sooner than we took in marching eastward; but then I durst not remain for a night, but getting into a vessel, I sailed straight for the Cape.

My Agnes’s part of the story is the most extraordinary of all.  The creatures’ motives for stealing and detaining her appears to have been as follows:—­

These animals remain always in distinct tribes, and are perfectly subordinate to a chief or ruler, and his secondary chiefs.  For their expedition to rob our gardens, they had brought their sovereign’s sole heir along with them, as they never leave any of the royal family behind them, for fear of a surprisal.  It was this royal cub which we killed, and the Queen his mother having been distractedly inconsolable for the loss of her darling, the old monarch had set out by night to try if possible to recover it; and on not finding it, he seized on my boy in its place, carried him home in safety to his Queen, and gave her him to nurse!  She did so.  Yes she positively did nurse him at her breast for three months, and never child throve better than he did.  By that time he was beginning to walk, and aim at speech, by imitating every voice he heard, whether of beast or bird; and it had struck the monsters as a great loss, that they had no means of teaching their young sovereign to speak, at which art he seemed so apt.  This led to the scheme of stealing his own mother to be his instructor, which they effected in the most masterly style, binding and gagging her in her own house, and carrying her from a populous hamlet in the fair forenoon, without having been discovered.

Agnes immediately took her boy under her tuition, and was soon given to understand that her will was to be the sole law of the community; and all the while that they detained her, they never refused her aught, save to take her home again.  Our little daughter she had named Beatrice, after her maternal grandmother.  She was born six months and six days after Agnes’s abstraction.  She spoke highly of the pongos, of their docility, generosity, warmth of affection to their mates and young ones, and of their irresistible strength.  At my wife’s injunctions, or from her example, they all wore aprons:  and the females had let the hair of their heads grow long.  It was glossy black, and neither curled nor woolly, and on the whole, I cannot help having a lingering affection for the creatures.  They would make the most docile, powerful, and affectionate of all slaves; but they come very soon to their growth, and are but shortlived, in that way approximating to the rest of the brute creation.  They live entirely on fruits, roots, and vegetables, and taste no animal food whatever.

I asked Agnes much of the civility of their manner to her, and she always describes it as respectful and uniform.  For awhile she never thought herself quite safe when near the Queen, but the dislike of the latter to her arose entirely out of the boundless affection for the boy.  No mother could possibly be fonder of her offspring than this affectionate creature was of William, and she was jealous of his mother for taking him from her, and causing him to be weaned.  But then the chief never once left the two Queens by themselves; they had always a guard day and night.  Win.  MITCHELL.