The Man Among the Monkeys: Ninety Days in Apeland

I was born at Macao, in China, and am descended from one of those brave adventurers who, under the leadership of the celebrated Vasco de Gama, boldly left Lisbon, towards the end of the fifteenth century, to conquer the Indies.

If I have good reason to congratulate myself on the accuracy of my pedigree, I have, nevertheless, no plausible grounds for believing that I am descended from one of those sons of noble families who were attached by the sole tie of glory to their illustrious chief. My grandfather, it is true, used sometimes to say that our name of Marasquin was a corruption of Marascarenhas, one of the greatest of names among those adventurous Portuguese who followed Vasco de Gama from the banks of the Tagus to the end of Asia; but I have always had serious doubts upon this score.

Moreover, my worthy grandfather himself, Nicholas Marasquin, was to my knowledge never anything more than an industrious trader, established at Macao. My father, Juan Perez Marasquin, was pretty much the same. To him I owe this testimony—that the extent of his ambition, during a lifetime, too short, alas! to my great regret, was simply to pass for an honest man, a good Christian, and a loyal bird-fancier.

This, then, was his profession; I do not blush for it, although certain persons, through ignorance, or actuated by jealousy, have sought to reduce it to the level of a licensed dealer in game and poultry.

Even without descending so low as this, it would still be very unfair to regard the bird-fancier’s profession—which, by the way, became in later years my own—as restricted to the mere sale of birds, such as we know it ordinarily to be followed in Europe. My father possessed in his vast menagerie one of the finest collections of which the Portuguese Indies could boast, for it comprised not merely birds, but all kinds of rare and curious animals. Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, were all represented there by specimens of some of the strangest and most exquisitely formed creatures which inhabit in their native state the almost impenetrable forests of the eastern hemisphere. The profession of naturalist, when exercised on this scale, is really a very lucrative one, for the taste of the European colonists, and the almost insane passion of the Chinese, for these interesting products of nature, are matters of notoriety.

To his trade in living animals my father added the art and mystery of stuffing them when dead, which was not the least lucrative profession of the two. He had given me lessons in this learned and delicate art of restoring to defunct birds and quadrupeds not alone the precise forms but the very attitudes which they affected during lifetime. Thanks to the counsels of so excellent a demonstrator, I acquired a remarkable skill in taxidermy; and you will find further on, if you read through this account of my adventures, that I was indebted to this useful and beautiful science for my escape from the tragical end which at one period menaced me.

Our house had prospered for more than a century at Macao. My father, on succeeding to the collection, added considerably to it, and thanks to the intelligent care of the good, economical, and devoted woman he espoused, he managed to raise his establishment to the very highest position in that particular branch of industry in which he was engaged.

But if this business yields, as I have already said, such rich rewards, on the other hand it is attended not only with difficulties, but with perils as well, as I have had only too many opportunities of proving. It is carried on under conditions of which most people are ignorant. It is not sufficient for a dealer in animals to purchase a bargain, and then to sell it again at a profit. It is requisite that he should go the length of procuring in a wild state those rarer kinds of animals which, when obtained, are certain to realise a good price. Hence the indispensable necessity of being at once both merchant and hunter, or rather of being first of all hunter before becoming merchant.

My father used to go himself to hunt most of the animals in which he dealt—a laborious kind of occupation, which I, in my turn, learnt to follow, whilst accompanying him on his expeditions—sometimes to the coast of China—sometimes to the jungles of the Isle of Hainan, so prolific in wild animals—sometimes as far as Japan, in spite of the obstacles and perils of a navigation bravely undertaken in barques of slender construction, spite of the Malay pirates—those veritable sharks, who swallow everything that crosses their path; and spite of the cruel punishments which used formerly to await those whom the Chinese and Japanese chanced to find trespassing on their sacred territories.