children, and for three days a considerable body of the tallest and
strongest of the ourang-outangs attended our steps.

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.