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Inquiries into Human Faculty
and the countries of the Upper Nile, writes me word in answer to my
inquiries
“I am sure that negroes often capture and keep alive wild animals. I have bought them
and received them as presents— wild cats, jackals, panthers, the wild dog, the two best
lions now in the Zoological Gardens, monkeys innumerable and of all sorts, and mongoos.
I cannot say that I distinctly recollect any pets among the lowest orders of men that I met
with, such as the Denkas, but I am sure they exist, and in this way. When I was on the
White Nile and at Khartoum, very few merchants went up the White Nile; none had
stations. They were little known to the natives; but none returned without some live animal
or bird which they had procured from them. While I was at Khartoum, there came an
Italian wild beast showman, after the Wombwell style. He made a tour of the towns up to
Doul and Fazogly, Kordofan and the peninsula, and collected a large number of animals.
Thus my opinion distinctly is, that negroes do keep wild animals alive. I am sure of it;
though I can only vaguely recollect them in one or two cases. I remember some chief in
Abyssinia who had a pet lion which he used to tease, and I have often seen monkeys about
huts.”
[Equatorial Africa.]—The most remarkable instance I have met with in
modern Africa is the account of a menagerie that existed up to the
beginning of the reign of the present king of the Wahumas, on the shores
of Lake Nyanza. Suna, the great despot of that country, reigned till 1857.
Captains Burton and Speke were in the neighbourhood in the following
year, and Captain Burton thus describes (Journal R. G. Soc., xxix. 282)
the report he received of Suna’s collection: —
“He had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar beasts of disport;
he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty,
that even a cock of peculiar form or colour would have been forwarded by its owner to
feed his eyes." -
Captain Speke, in his subsequent journey to the Nile, passed many
months at Uganda, as the guest of Suna’s youthful successor, M’tese. The
fame of the old menagerie was fresh when Captain Speke was there. He
wrote to me as follows concerning it: —
“I was told Suna kept buffaloes, antelopes, and animals of all colours (meaning
‘sorts’), and in equal quantities. M’tese,
