CHAPTER XI HUNTING GORILLAS IN CENTRAL AFRICA
In 1910 I was in British East Africa collecting specimens for the group of elephants recently completed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. My plan at that time was to leave the region of snow-capped Mt. Kenia when I had finished making my elephant studies, and to go into German East Africa, as it was then, in an endeavour to get specimens for a group of gorillas to be mounted for the Museum. I had obtained the proper papers from the German authorities, and I had funds for the purpose. Nevertheless, I had to abandon the plan at that time because an elephant caught me unawares and mauled me sufficiently to prevent my carrying out my project.
But the gorilla group remained as an interesting prospect ahead, and I read eagerly any reports which came to my knowledge of hunters or scientists who had seen or killed any of these animals. Most gorillas reported since their original discovery had been reported from nearer the west coast of Africa than the region which I had intended to explore for them, but I had heard of one instance of a gorilla in German East Africa. The story was of a German who had tried to catch a grown gorilla in a net. He had succeeded in getting the net over the animal and then the animal had succeeded in tearing his way out of the net and killing the man. Whether this story was true or not I do not know. Before I left Africa, in 1911, I heard that a man named Grauer had gone into the country where I had intended going and that he had come out through Nairobi with eight gorilla skins. Altogether there came to me considerable corroboration of my belief that there were gorillas in the Lake Kivu country of Central Africa, and my intention to go there and collect the material for a group remained constant although, through the period of the war, inactive.
It came to life in 1920. One night I was expounding the beauties of Africa to my friend Mr. H. E. Bradley when he turned to Mrs. Bradley and said, "Let's take him at his word and spend a year in Africa." Mrs. Bradley asked what they should do with their five-year-old daughter. Nothing pleased me more than to assure them that an expedition to Central Africa was entirely safe and practicable for women and children, and so an expedition was agreed upon. Years before, when she was a child, I had promised the niece of a friend of mine, Miss Martha Miller, to take her to Africa. I had never been allowed to forget the promise. Now the time for fulfillment had come. So the party was formed of these two ladies, Bradley, the five-year-old child, Miss Priscilla Hall, and me. Miss Hall had agreed to look after the youngster while the others hunted. Not long afterward it was definitely decided that the expedition was to be a gorilla expedition. I received a letter from an Englishman, Mr. C. D. Foster, who had shot a male and female gorilla and caught a baby in the country I had in mind. That led us to base our plans on gorillas alone, and it was a gorilla expedition, although Miss Miller killed an elephant the first time she shot at anything in Africa and both she and Mrs. Bradley killed lions.
To me the gorilla made a much more interesting quarry than lions, elephants, or any of the other African game, for the gorilla is still comparatively little known. Not many people have shot gorillas and almost none have studied them in their native habitat. The gorilla is one of the most remarkable and least known large animals in the world, and when is added to that the fact that he is the nearest to man of any other member of the animal kingdom, a gorilla expedition acquires a tremendous fascination.
An Englishman named Battell—a captive of the Portuguese of Angola—in 1590 described an animal which in all probability was the gorilla. Vague stories from other sources appeared in travellers' accounts, but no real description of the gorilla came to Europe or America until December, 1847, when Dr. Thomas S. Savage, a missionary, published a paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History. Doctor Savage was detained in April of that year at a mission on the Gaboon River in West Africa and there made his discovery. He did not see a live gorilla himself, but from skulls and information brought him by natives, made a rather remarkable description of the animals, part of which is as follows:
Its height is above five feet, it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the Engé-eco (the chimpanzee). With age it becomes gray, which fact has given rise to the report that both animals are seen of different colors....
Their gait is shuffling, the motion of the body, which is never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. The arms being longer than those of the chimpanzee it does not stoop as much in walking; like that animal it makes progression by thrusting its arms forward, resting the hands on the ground and then giving the body a half jumping, half swinging motion between them. In this act it is said not to flex the fingers as does the chimpanzee, resting on the knuckles, but to extend them, thus making a fulcrum of the hand. When it assumes the walking posture to which it is said to be much inclined, it balances its huge body by flexing the arms upward. They live in bands, but are not so numerous as the chimpanzees; the females generally exceed the other sex in number. My informants all agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males grow up a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community. The silly stories about their carrying off women from the native towns, and vanquishing the elephants, related by voyagers and widely copied into books, are unhesitatingly denied. They have been averred of the chimpanzee, but this is still more preposterous. They probably had their origin in the marvelous accounts given by the natives, of the Engé-ena, to credulous traders.
Their dwellings, if they may be so called, are similar to those of the chimpanzee, consisting simply of a few sticks and leafy branches supported by the crotches and limbs of trees; they afford no shelter, and are occupied only at night.
They are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man as does the chimpanzee. They are objects of terror to the natives, and are never encountered by them except on the defensive. The few that have been captured were killed by elephant hunters and native traders as they came suddenly upon them while passing through the forests.
It is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell that resounds far and wide through the forest, something like kh-ah! kh-ah! prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp is contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. The females and young at the first cry quickly disappear; he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession. The hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure he permits the animal to grasp the barrel and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires; should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of an ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter.
The killing of an Engé-ena (gorilla) is considered an act of great skill and courage, and brings the victor signal honor. A slave to an Mpongwe man, from an interior tribe, killed the male and female whose bones are the origin of this article. On one occasion he had succeeded in killing an elephant, and returning home met a male Engé-ena, and being a good marksman he soon brought him to the ground. He had not proceeded far before the female was observed, which he also killed. This act, unheard of before, was considered almost superhuman. The man's freedom was immediately granted to him, and his name proclaimed abroad as the prince of hunters.
Eight years afterward the first white man killed a gorilla. In 1855 Paul Du Chaillu, a French-American, went to West Africa after gorillas. To our party, with the intention of not only shooting gorillas but of studying them and taking moving pictures of them, the narrative of this intrepid little hunter had particular fascination.
On the day that Du Chaillu saw the first gorilla ever seen by a white man his black and savage attendants had assuaged a hunger that beset the party by eating a snake. This was more than Du Chaillu could do. His account[1] reads:
When the snake was eaten, and I, the only empty-stomached individual of the company, had sufficiently reflected on the disadvantages of being bred in a Christian country, we began to look about the ruins of the village near which we sat. A degenerate kind of sugar-cane was growing on the very spot where the houses had formerly stood, and I made haste to pluck some of this and chew it for the little sweetness it had. But, as we were plucking, my men perceived what instantly threw us all into the greatest excitement. Here and there the cane was beaten down, torn up by the roots, and lying about in fragments which had evidently been chewed.
I knew that these were fresh tracks of the gorilla, and joy filled my heart. My men looked at each other in silence, and muttered Nguyla, which is as much as to say in Mpongwe, Ngina, or, as we say, gorilla.
We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints of the so-long-desired animal. It was the first time I had ever seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescribable. Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face that monster of whose ferocity, strength, and cunning the natives had told me so much; an animal scarce known to the civilized world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the gorilla, and my feelings were really excited to a painful degree.
By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been several gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow them.
The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a good escort of two or three men to take care of them and reassure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully at our guns—for the gorilla gives you no time to reload, and woe to him whom he attacks! We were armed to the teeth. My men were remarkably silent, for they were going on an expedition of more than usual risk; for the male gorilla is literally the king of the African forest. He and the crested lion of Mount Atlas are the two fiercest and strongest beasts of this continent. The lion of South Africa cannot compare with either for strength or courage.
As we left the camp, the men and women left behind crowded together, with fear written on their faces. Miengai, Makinda, and Ngolai set out in one party, and myself and Yeava formed another, for the hunt. We determined to keep near each other, that in emergency we might be at hand to help each other. And for the rest, silence and a sure aim were the only cautions to be given.
As we followed the tracks we could easily see that there were four or five of them; though none appeared very large. We saw where they had run along on all fours, the usual mode of progression of these animals, and where from time to time they had seated themselves to chew the canes they had borne off. The chase began to be very exciting.
We had agreed to return to the women and their guards, and consult upon final operations, when we should have discovered their probable course; and this was now done. To make sure of not alarming our prey, we moved the whole party forward a little way to where some leafy huts, built by passing traders, served for shelter and concealment. And having here bestowed the women—who have a lively fear of the terrible gorilla, in consequence of various stories current among the tribes, of women having been carried off into the woods by the fierce animal—we prepared once more to set out in chase, this time hopeful to catch a shot.
Looking once more to our guns, we started off. I confess that I never was more excited in my life. For years I had heard of the terrible roar of the gorilla, of its vast strength, its fierce courage if, unhappily, only wounded by a shot. I knew that we were about to pit ourselves against an animal which even the tiger of these mountains fears and which, perhaps, has driven the lion out of this territory; for the king of beasts, so numerous elsewhere in Africa, is never met in the land of the gorilla. Thus it was with no little emotion that I now turned again toward the prize at which I had been hoping for years to get a shot.
We descended a hill, crossed a stream on a fallen log, and presently approached some huge boulders of granite. Alongside of this granite block lay an immense dead tree, and about this we saw many evidences of the very recent presence of the gorillas.
Our approach was very cautious. We were divided into two parties. Makinda led one and I the other. We were to surround the granite block behind which Makinda supposed the gorillas to be hiding. Guns cocked and in hand, we advanced through the dense wood, which cast a gloom even in midday over the whole scene. I looked at my men, and saw plainly that they were in even greater excitement than myself.
Slowly we pressed on through the dense brush, fearing almost to breathe for fear of alarming the beasts. Makinda was to go to the right of the rock, while I took the left. Unfortunately, he circled it at too great a distance. The watchful animal saw him. Suddenly I was startled by a strange, discordant, half human, devilish cry, and beheld four young gorillas running toward the deep forests. We fired, but hit nothing. Then we rushed on in pursuit; but they knew the woods better than we. Once I caught a glimpse of one of the animals again, but an intervening tree spoiled my mark, and I did not fire. We ran till we were exhausted, but in vain. The alert beasts made good their escape. When we could pursue no more, we returned slowly to our camp, where the women were anxiously expecting us.
I protest I felt almost like a murderer when I saw the gorillas this first time. As they ran—on their hind legs—they looked fearfully like hairy men; their heads down, their bodies inclined forward, their whole appearance like men running for their lives. Take with this their awful cry, which, fierce and animal as it is, has yet something human in its discordance, and you will cease to wonder that the natives have the wildest superstitions about these "wild men of the woods."
Both Savage and Du Chaillu and all succeeding authorities, including the standard works on natural history, speak of the gorillas as among the most powerful and ferocious animals on earth. And this reputation is so firmly established in the popular mind that our plan of taking ladies with no previous hunting experience of any kind into a gorilla country in Central Africa was looked upon as madness. But to the general theory of the ferocity of wild animals I have never been a convert. And the more I have seen of wild animals in Africa the less I have believed in their ferocity. Consequently, I explained my creed concerning the gorillas in this fashion:
I believe that the gorilla is normally a perfectly amiable and decent creature. I believe that if he attacks man it is because he is being attacked or thinks that he is being attacked. I believe that he will fight in self-defense and probably in defense of his family; that he will keep away from a fight until he is frightened or driven into it. I believe that, although the old male advances when a hunter is approaching a family of gorillas, he will not close in, if the man involved has the courage to stand firm. In other words, his advance will turn out to be what is usually called a bluff.
I believe, however, that the white man who will allow a gorilla to get within ten feet of him without shooting is a plain darn fool, for certainly the average man would have little show in the clutch of a three or four hundred pound gorilla.
My faith in the general amiability and decency of the gorilla is not based on experience or actual knowledge of any sort, but on deductions from the observation of wild animals in general and more particularly of monkeys. There are few animals that deliberately go into fight with an unknown antagonist or with a known antagonist, for that matter, without what seems to them a good reason. In other words, they are not looking for trouble.
The lion will fight when the maintenance of his dignity demands it. Most animals will fight only when driven to it through fear, either for themselves or their young.
The first living gorilla that I ever observed was in the Zoölogical Park in London many years ago. It was very young and its chief aim in life seemed a desire to be loved. This has seemed to be the chief characteristic of the few live gorillas that I have seen in captivity. They appear to have an extremely affectionate disposition and to be passionately fond of the person most closely associated with them; and I think there is no doubt that John Daniel, who died in the Ringling Brothers Circus in Madison Square Garden in the spring of 1921, died of a broken heart because he was separated from his mistress. I did not have the pleasure of seeing John Daniel alive; but in death he certainly had the appearance of anything but a savage beast. The above notes are here set down for the purpose of recording the frame of mind with which I am going into the Kivu country to study, photograph, and collect gorillas.
Going as I am, equipped with motion-picture cameras with which one can get motion pictures under most adverse conditions, I am led to hope for something in the way of photographs of live wild gorillas. I hope that I shall have the courage to allow an apparently charging gorilla to come within reasonable distance before shooting. I hesitate to say just what I consider a reasonable distance at the present moment. I shall feel very gratified if I can get a photograph at twenty feet. I should be proud of my nerve if I were able to show a photograph of him at ten feet, but I do not expect to do this unless I am at the moment a victim of suicidal mania.
The rest of the party had the courage of my convictions and with these tenets we set out, men, women, and child to hunt the "ferocious" gorilla in the heart of Africa.
While getting provisions and equipment in London I had the good fortune to be able to check up with accuracy the location of the gorilla country. I had lunch with Sir Northrop Macmillan from Nairobi, Kenia Colony, Sir Charles Ross, and Mr. Grogan, who twenty-four years before had walked alone from the Cape to Cairo—the first man who ever made that trip. Sir Charles Ross had directions from Mr. T. Alexander Barnes for getting to the Kivu region where Barnes had the year before killed a gorilla. Mr. Grogan supplemented these directions, for in this very region on his famous walk he had found a gorilla skull. He knew the region well, for he had been stationed in it during the war. With this very valuable corroboration we set sail for Cape Town.
To the Kivu gorilla country from Cape Town is a varied and interesting journey. It took us about six weeks of constant travelling. The journey from Cape Town to Bukama, where we left the railroad, occupied seventeen days including stops which are quite a feature of South African travel. At one place we waited six days for a train. It is worth notice that on this entire railroad journey we did not see a single head of game—so rapidly has African wild life disappeared in the south. From Bukama we travelled on a steel barge towed by a river boat for a five-day run down the Lualaba which is really the upper waters of the Congo. The boat ran along during the day and tied up at night so that we missed nothing of the beauty and interest of that part of the river's course. The bird life was in great profusion. Great trees hung over the river and were reflected from its placid surface with almost perfect outline and detail. There were a few crocodiles in sight. We saw one hippopotamus and once on this trip we saw elephants some distance from the bank.
A map showing Mr. Akeley's route to the gorilla country north of Lake Kivu and
its location in Africa
At the end of this lazy steamer trip we came to Kabalo from which occasionally a train sets out upon the journey to Albertville on Lake Tanganyika. A boat on the lake took us from Albertville to Usumbura from which a seven days' safari brought us to the lower end of Lake Kivu. To get from the bottom of Lake Kivu to the upper end, we had to make arrangements for a special trip of the little government boat. This we did with the Belgian Administrator at Usumbura. Here, as elsewhere, my experience with the administrative officers in these outposts of the Belgian Congo was one of courtesy and effectiveness. Halfway up the lake we stopped at the White Friars' Mission on the west bank and heard the story of a gorilla recently killed in the vicinity. This gorilla had come down into a banana grove not far from the Mission. The chief of the village which owned the grove told his followers to go out and chase the beast away, but not to go armed, for the beast, in the superstition of the neighbourhood, had some sacred attributes. The chief's subjects accordingly went forth with sticks to drive out the gorilla, but he refused to be driven and resented the disturbance enough to catch one of his tormentors and kill him. After this the chief thought the gorilla less sacred and ordered his subjects to take their spears with them and kill the animal.
I was not entirely clear about the veracity of this tale nor whether it confirmed my theory about the gorilla or the more usual "ferocious" theory. If the natives were willing to go out to chase the gorilla away armed only with sticks, its reputation for ferocity could not be great. On the other hand, the confidence in the animal's harmlessness seemed to have been misplaced. But one fact did stand out. We were getting into the real gorilla country. That quickened the blood. The next day we went to the head of the lake.
A Belgian administrator and his wife who were on the boat with us left us at Kissenyi at the northern end of Lake Kivu. They had a three weeks' trek before them, over the mountains to their own home and the district over which the administrator had supervision. They had told us many stories of gorillas in their section of the country, of the gorillas becoming so aggressive that they had entered several villages and driven out the natives, and they had urged us to go with them, but we stuck to our original plan.
Here at Kissenyi was another Belgian station and here we met Mrs. T. Alexander Barnes, the wife of a man whose directions we had received from Sir Charles Ross. Barnes himself was in the interior hunting gorillas for the British Museum. We sent a note to him because we did not want to interfere with his hunting, and in the meanwhile set to work to get our porters and guides ready. We decided it would be best for the women to stay at Kissenyi for the time being and for me to push on for the gorilla country. There were two reasons for this decision. Mrs. Bradley had a little touch of fever and it was not advisable for her to leave, and secondly, while I did not believe much in the danger to us from the gorillas, I was greatly afraid that with a large hunting party there might be equally little danger to them. So it was determined that I should try to insure the Museum some specimens and if possible get the first moving pictures of live wild gorillas ever taken.
It was a three days' march from Kissenyi to the White Friars' Mission at Lulenga in the interior. This Mission I found was the base from which Barnes operated and also, I learned, it was the base the Prince of Sweden had used. It lay near the foot of Mt. Mikeno in a country of volcanic origin. The White Friars themselves carry on here the teaching of the Catholic religion to which they add the practice of medicine and teaching of manual training. Some of the friars have been there as long as seventeen years. At the Mission I was supplied with a guide. I went a little way into the woods and was shown signs that gorillas had fed there within a day or two. I was nervous and anxious. The long trip was done. I was actually in the gorilla country. I was an alternating current of eagerness to go and fear that I should find nothing.
The latter mood prevailed the next morning, for although I was ready to start for the bamboos by daylight my guides, who were supposed to be in camp, were nowhere to be found. I had to send for them, but we did not get started before eight.
We trailed up through the forest into the bamboos, seeing signs of elephant and buffalo—some of the signs being made the night before—and I had to pinch myself occasionally to bring about the realization that I was not hunting elephants on a miniature Kenia. There was the same vegetation, except that the trees were smaller. There were elephant trails, but only a few and with small tracks. There were no great forest trees like those of Kenia, no bamboos seventy-five feet high with five-inch stems. There was just little stuff, but still it was all reminiscent of Kenia. One thing, the slopes were just as steep and just as slippery, and the mud in the level places just as deep and sticky as Kenia's.
Through this forest there are native trails or game trails almost everywhere. We had followed these trails for about two hours up the side of Mikeno when we came to a spot where there was a little mud hole in the path. I'll never forget it. In that mud hole were the marks of four great knuckles where the gorilla had placed his hand on the ground. There is no other track like this on earth—there is no other hand in the world so large. Nearest to it is the hand of the chimpanzee, and he does not place his hand on the ground in the same way. As I looked at that track I lost the faith on which I had brought my party to Africa. Instinctively I took my gun from the gun boy. I knew then the feeling Du Chaillu described in his quaint phrase, "My feelings were really excited to a painful degree."
I had more thrill from the sight of this first track than from anything that happened later. I forgot all about Kenia as the guide took up the trail. Half an hour later we came upon other tracks, tracks made by the feet of the beast, enormous human-looking tracks showing the marks of a heel which no other living thing in the world but the gorilla and man has. I gave the boy back the Springfield and took the big .475 elephant gun. And although the next bit of going was hard and wearing, I carried the gun myself and trusted it to no gun boy.
We followed the trail for two hours, and I think a full half hour was spent on all fours in true storybook fashion.
It led us through a clearing where bamboo cutters had been at work, and we failed to pick it up again even though I offered the guides a king's ransom (in their eyes) if they would show me the old boy before dark. They were lackadaisical about the whole affair. I had to give it up, and as I started for camp I realized that I was very tired. Then we spent an hour going straight up the steepest possible slope and down again following sounds that turned out to be made by a troop of monkeys. When we reached camp at three o'clock in the inevitable downpour of this season, I was "all in." The rain stopped, and I called a conference of the guides with the result that I came to the conclusion that they were entirely useless. They did not want to go on at all. I broke camp immediately and started a two-and-a-half hour march to the Mission not knowing just what my next move would be—probably to hunt up some "bushmen" as guides. I reached the Mission before sundown, in the usual rain, and went to bed.
The next morning I came around to the southwest of Mikeno, about three hours from the Mission, to the village of the Sultan of Burunga who came out to meet me. I explained my mission, and he immediately brought forward from the group of natives who accompanied him two splendid fellows who he said would guide me. There was a gleam of real hope in the situation. We would camp at Burunga for the night and start up the mountain in the morning. As I turned to go toward the indicated camping place, a husky, handsome native came up in breathless haste, and presented a note of recommendation as gun-bearer signed by T. A. Barnes. He was promptly engaged and everything seemed bright again.
I was ready to start soon after daylight. I had felt so keen for the coming of the light and had hoped for so much from the new gun-bearer and guides. They had a cozy nest some distance from camp; they had seemed so enthusiastic the day before and had promised an early start. I waited and waited till my patience was exhausted. I feared another farce so finally sent for them. They came smiling, confident, and keen to be off. They insisted that no porters could go—it would not be possible to carry cameras or any of the scientific kit where they were going. It was up to them. I had put myself in their hands. I wanted to at least see a gorilla. I still doubted that there could be such a thing in this part of the world—even though I had seen its tracks.
We started down into that deep chasm to the west which the camp overhung, then up to the other side—up and up—crawling and scrambling, the guides cutting a way through the dense growth of greenery, beating down and cursing the nettles which were everywhere. On and on up to the crest of the ridge and then up along the "hogback" until we were five hundred feet above camp—then at a level along the western slope. I earnestly hoped they would go no higher; it was grilling work. We were overlooking another chasm with a still higher ridge on the far side. We stopped occasionally to scan the opposite side. It was deathly still—there was rarely the slightest breeze. Someone heard a sound across the nullah—very slight—but the guides were suspicious. We went on, stopping now and then to look and listen. The youngest guide, a boy of fourteen, perhaps, pointed to a spot where he had seen a movement of the vegetation. We watched closely for five minutes, then a great black head slowly appeared above the green—rather indistinct, but there could be no doubt as to what it was.
It was my first glimpse of a wild gorilla. It has left an everlasting impression, for it was so totally different from anything I had expected. In a solid wall of vivid green a great scraggly black head rose slowly into view where it remained motionless for perhaps a half minute, giving me time to view it with field glasses so that I was able to make out the features. I was actually seeing a live wild gorilla. At the end of a long journey I was face to face with the creature I sought. I took the gun with slight intention of chancing a shot at that distance unless there should be opportunity for very careful and deliberate aim. The shaggy head was withdrawn—then a glimpse of the great silvery back and we saw no more. We went into the beastly chasm and up again to where he had been.
THE LONE MALE OF KARISIMBI
Shot by Mr. Bradley
THE HEAD OF MR. AKELEY'S FIRST GORILLA
The guides were too eager; I had constantly to hold them back while I stopped to breathe. We took up his trail. He led us on to the crest of that ridge and then along the "hogback" till we were about one thousand feet above camp. Then as the trail swung along the other slope at the level we heard one short roar ahead of us. The thrill of it! I had actually heard the roar of a bull gorilla! It seemed perhaps two hundred yards ahead. I thought it indicated alarm and that he would lead us a merry chase. We continued along the trail slowly, for it led along a slope so steep that without the rank vegetation we could not have stuck on.
We had gone not more than one hundred and fifty yards from the time we heard the roar, with the gun-bearer just ahead and the second gun and guides behind. The gun-bearer stopped, looking up into the dense tangle above us. It was still as death—no sound of movement could I hear. The gun was in his left hand; with his right he clung to the bank just beside him. Behind there was a four-inch tree between me and a straight drop of twenty feet, then a slide of fifty feet to the edge of a chasm more than 200 feet deep. I leaned my back against this tree that I might straighten up for a better look. The gun-bearer turned slowly and passed me the .475. As I took it I heard that roar again—thirty feet away, almost directly above. One plunge and down we would all go three hundred feet to the bottom. Without the support of the sapling at my back it would not be humanly possible to fire the big gun upward from that trail. There was a deal of comfort in the feel of that old gun even though theoretically I did not fear gorillas; it had stood by me in more than one close place. After the roar there was silence for an instant—not a branch stirred—then a crashing rush along at a level, above and past me—another roar—back again to where he had been. I had seen nothing but a swaying of the mass of vegetation right down to our feet. He stopped where he had been at first. Silence. Through the green against the sky I seemed to make out a denser mass—the outline of his head. I aimed just below and his fourth roar was broken by the roar of the .475. A terrific crashing plunge of three or four hundred pounds of beast, he struck the trail eight feet from me. The gun was on him. There was a soft nose in the left barrel ready for him, but it was unnecessary. The slight ledge of trail did not stop him in the least. He crashed on down over and over, almost straight downward toward the edge of the chasm.
My heart sank for I realized that if he went to the bottom I would stand little chance of being able to recover him and my first gorilla would have been killed in vain. Overhanging the edge of the chasm there was a lone tree, two feet in diameter, and the gorilla in his plunge struck this tree, rolled up on its leaning trunk, and back again to its base, where he came to rest with his head hanging over on one side of the tree and his feet on the other. Had there been a single movement in him he must have gone on. The solid from the right barrel had done its work well—in just above the heart through the æorta, through the spine, and out through the right shoulder blade. As he came crashing down I somehow felt confident that all was well. I have never had a more thrilling experience, but I've been much more frightened many times. The gun-bearer was a trump. He was the worst scared black man I ever saw. If I looked as frightened as he, I am thankful no movie camera was on the job. You see, he was between me and the beast when he struck the trail eight feet away.
I had left the cameras and tools in camp to be sent for if they were needed. As the beast lay, a camera could not be used. I could do nothing in sketches worth while, so I sent for nothing. I set to work with my jack-knife and one of the boys had a native iron knife and with these two tools we skinned and skeletonized the gorilla. As we turned him over it kept all hands busy to avoid losing the balance of the beast and ourselves. It took more than a half hour to get the skin and skeleton back to where I had shot from—a human rope stunt. The boys all worked beautifully. Then we had the long, hard trek back to camp.
All hands in camp (forty odd) got a present—enough so that they were all happy, although that did not take much. I was busy all the following day with skin and skeleton, making such studies as were possible. Everything was set for a real hunt on the next day, but I could not hope for a more thrilling and dramatic episode than the taking of my first gorilla.