CHAPTER XII ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO
The day after I shot my first gorilla on the slopes of Mikeno I spent in camp. I should have preferred to spend it resting, for the day before had been a strenuous one, especially for a man suffering from blood poisoning, as I was. I had had it for some time and had lost about twenty pounds during the preceding three weeks. This left me in a weakened condition and a rest would have been welcome. Had I been hunting merely to kill I should have laid off a day. But science is a jealous mistress and takes little account of a man's feelings. I had skinned the old gorilla roughly in the field the day before. If I wanted properly to preserve the specimen, there was no time to be lost. I set the Negroes at work cleaning the skeleton, keeping an eye on them as I worked at other things to see that they did not lose any of the bones. I had personally to take care of the feet, hands, and head. This latter I set up and photographed. Then I made a death mask of the face. The brains and internal organs I had to preserve in formalin. The whole business was a full hard day's work. One of the chief difficulties with scientific collecting is the necessity for doing all the skinning, cleaning, measuring, and preserving at once. For one man one gorilla properly attended to is a full day's work. If a man gets two or three specimens, he has to keep working night and day until he gets them done.
This is one of the reasons why, although great numbers of animals are shot in Africa, there is so comparatively little scientific and taxidermical data about them. This day I was up about daybreak. I had an English breakfast, most of which had come from London with me—tea, toast, marmalade, and bacon. From then until dark I measured and skinned and preserved, and when night came I rolled into my blankets and slept the sleep of exhaustion.
When daybreak came I was ready to start again. Had I felt certain of finding gorillas in that country as easily as I now know they can be found I might have waited a day. But I had come 15,000 miles to see gorillas and I couldn't wait for the fulfillment of my hopes, nor did the ease of finding my first prize assure me that I was certain of getting the others I wanted.
We set out in the same direction as on the previous hunt. In the woods on these mountain sides the ground growth is extremely thick, and as high up as we went there were no elephant or other paths. It was necessary to go through the woods. The natives' method of travelling is to cut a trail as they proceed. They used a hooked knife of great effectiveness with which to cut the undergrowth. The stuff is thick enough to impede one's progress, but far worse than that it is filled with nettles, so that unless it is cut out in this way one is constantly and unmercifully stung. That is bad enough for a white man who is clothed, but is even worse for the blacks who wear nothing to protect them. Nevertheless, cutting as they go, the natives make pretty good time, perhaps two miles an hour up hill and down. Anyway, I found that I had all I could do to keep up with them; weak as I was, I had frequently to slow them down.
In this way we had passed over several ridges when we came on the trail of a band of gorillas. The trail they make is plain enough, for the undergrowth is so thick that each of the animals leaves a kind of swath of bent and broken greenery. Their trail led us along the side of a steep slope, so steep that every move had to be made with caution. If the gorilla was in the habit of travelling either far or fast, catching up with him in this country would be a heart-breaking if not an impossible task. But I believe the gorilla normally travels only from three to five miles a day. He loafs along through the forest, eating as he goes. As the trail we found was fresh it was likely that the gorillas were not far away. And so it turned out. We had followed for perhaps an hour when a dislodged rock thundering down into the chasm about two hundred yards ahead of us gave a clue to their whereabouts, and so we sat tight and soon located them by moving bushes, across a bit of a bay formed by a curve of the ridge. There I saw a big female and very foolishly tried a shot with the Springfield. I suppose in justification of my lack of faith in the thing it missed fire twice and by the time I got the big gun in hand the female had disappeared and a big silver-backed male was in sight.
He was about 150 yards away. He was just disappearing when I got the big gun to my shoulder and I had to shoot quickly. I fired and missed. They disappeared, and I fully appreciated what an ass I had been. We scrambled on for an hour more—the hillside becoming higher and more precipitous every minute. At last a slight movement of the bush above made us aware of their presence.
The fact that we came up with them again after my shooting was pretty good evidence that even when disturbed the gorilla does not travel either far or fast. The experience I had had with my first gorilla two days before corroborated this. He had, in fact, run only about 300 yards after first seeing us before stopping. As a matter of fact, I do not believe that the gorilla can run fast. Unlike animals that catch others for food, the gorilla, who eats vegetation, does not have to run for his dinner. Neither does he have to run to escape serving as dinner for some other animals. His legs, compared to his weight, are small and, in relation to man's, very short. On fair footing I think the average man could outrun a gorilla.
Where we came in sight of this band there was no friendly tree to lean against as there had been in the case of the first gorilla. The hillside was so steep that it was difficult to find footing from which to shoot. For a slight sense of security I entangled myself in a bush and stood ready to shoot.
There was not the straight drop of the other day but a steep slope which could be done on all fours—for twenty feet—and then straight down two hundred feet. I got a fair sight of an old black female and it looked as though the bushes she was in would hold her if I killed her instantly. She was fifty feet away. I fired and she came exactly as the other one had—the slope was so steep it was practically a fall—and straight at me. I tried to dodge but could not as the recoil of the gun had caused me to lose my balance a bit and I could not recover in time. I threw myself flat, face down, just in time and she passed over me. It was so steep and the mass of green stuff going with her so softened things that I merely felt her—there was no perceptible shock, but when I got up I had a great welt on the top of my head which she had caused. As I partially rose there seemed to be an avalanche of gorillas. There was a big ball of black fur, squealing madly, rolling past—actually touching me—in the wake of the old one. I took a shot at it as it went over, and, by the time I had recovered and reloaded, two others that had been close by had disappeared.
I believe that to be the fastest charge ever made by a gorilla against man. I think it was pushed home with more abandon than any other on record. I am almost certain of these two statements, the particular reason for my certainty being that the gorilla, when she charged or more correctly speaking fell down the hill, was dead and she couldn't have any of the hesitations which I believe prevent such charges by live gorillas. The others followed her not in anger but in fear and because they accepted her lead without realizing that it was involuntary. If their charge had been aimed at me they had plenty of time to knock me off the mountain side before I could get up and shoot again, and the Negroes, being armed only with spears and hanging on a precipitous slope, were almost as defenceless.
I began to feel a good deal of confidence in my theory that the gorilla is not a ferocious beast, although I was gaining the utmost respect for his size and power. If being molested by man would make gorillas ferocious and aggressive, these animals should have been excessively dangerous, for within a very short time the Prince of Sweden had shot fourteen of them, and Barnes had killed several more. The very animals that I followed had probably heard the guns of these other men. Yet I could see no signs of ferocity. When I came up with the old male that I had killed first, he had run back and forth on the hillside barking in protest or surprise at my intrusion just as I have seen little monkeys run back and forth on a limb and bark; but of his having savage intentions against me I saw no sign. Of the two I was the savage and the aggressor. In the case of the female I had just shot, the same was true, even though she was accompanied by her baby. She evidently preferred to get away if possible. Cornered, I think and hope she would fight for her young.
What became of the last two animals I do not know. The black fur ball that I had fired at was, I believe, the four-year-old son of the old female. He apparently caught on somewhere, for a half hour later when we were trying to find a way down we came across him and, as he ran about, one of the guides speared him. I came up before he was dead. There was a heartbreaking expression of piteous pleading on his face. He would have come to my arms for comfort.
About this time the chasm filled with a fog so dense that we could not move with safety. Another half hour and the fog was cleared by a heavy cold rain and hail and we continued to search for a way down to the dead gorilla. The Negroes had worked earnestly, but they gave up and said it could not be done. Poor devils, they were stark naked in that icy rain; God knows how they lived through it. When they gave up they gave up for good apparently, stood shaking with cold, making no effort to find shelter from the rain. I took off my Burberry raincoat and got seven of them under it with me.
In such proximity to seven naked natives almost all of my senses were considerably oppressed and I was grateful when the rain lessened so that I might put them at a more respectful as well as a more comfortable distance. The others had huddled under an old tree root. All came out and we looked over the situation. We were on the side of a ridge of Mikeno. Where we were there was vegetation and a fair foothold. Below and above us were stretches of sheer rock. Not far from us a little stream fell off the shelf where we were, in a clear fall of 200 feet. The gorilla was somewhere near the bottom of that fall. The natives insisted that it was impossible to get to the dead animal. To go straight down was impossible. But I felt that there might be a chance to work along sideways in a patch of vegetation until we could get down to a lower level. By working back and forth on the face of the mountain side in this way I hoped to reach the dead gorilla. However, I soon realized that if I wanted to try this somewhat hazardous experiment I should have to lead the way, for the blacks had nothing greater than a few days' wages at stake while I had one of the prizes of a long and expensive expedition. So I swung down on the overhanging roots of a tree and began the descent with the natives following. It took a surprisingly long time for us to get down the 200 feet, and it finally turned out that the route that I took led off to one side where I could not reach the gorilla when I had descended to her level. Twenty or thirty feet farther down I managed to cross to the stream-bed and then went up the stream to the bottom of the falls and from there to where the body lay. Where the stream-bed was steepest, we literally had the water falling on our heads as we scrambled up.
It was a tough job skinning and skeletonizing her. In the first place, I was tired and she was heavy, and in the second place if she was turned over with anything but the utmost care she was likely to roll off down into the chasm below. Nor could I get much assistance from the boys, for there was only room enough for a man or two to help. However, in some manner we managed a satisfactory job in everything but one particular. The camera boy had come down but the tripod carrier never appeared. If it had been an ordinary camera the loss of the tripod would have made little difference, but it was the moving-picture camera, and a moving-picture camera without a tripod is useless.
It was well past mid-afternoon when the skin and bones were ready to move to camp.
As I worked I had kept wondering how we were ever to get up out of the chasm, especially with the added burdens we had acquired. I am still wondering how we did get out. The "human fly" was no more remarkable than those black boys. My heart was in my mouth for an hour watching them work their way up the almost perpendicular wall of that chasm with the skin and skeleton. We got to camp just before dark in a pouring rain, and I am free to confess that during the last hour I several times doubted if I should get in. It was beyond doubt the toughest day I ever spent. Never again—not for all the gorillas and museums in the world. I spent the next day in camp working on the two specimens—the female and the baby that had been speared—and finally had three beautiful gorilla skins all safe under the fly of my tent. They were so well assorted that they would make a very satisfactory group if I got no more. I had death masks of each and skeletons of the two old ones; but the four-year-old, a vigorous young male, I skinned with infinite care and preserved the entire carcass with formalin and salt—a precious anatomical record for sculptural and taxidermic use.
The gun boys and guides came the following morning and said they were going home. It took an hour, money, and many promises to make them change their minds. Heaven knows I did not blame them. I would not do what they had done for money.
However, I did not start again. Although I had worked one whole day on the last two gorillas I had some things still to do and I felt that with enough material on hand for a good group even if I got no more I could go a bit easier. So I stayed in camp another day and planned a gorilla hunt for the moving-picture camera. On the side hills where we had been hunting there was no possible hope of using a camera so I told the boys if they took me in any such places again I would annihilate them. Not only would it be useless for the camera but I felt that I couldn't stand another such trip myself. So they promised me an easier route, and equipped with photographic outfit we started off in the direction of the Saddle between Mikeno and Karisimbi. It seemed a very stiff climb to me in the beginning, but I have learned since that it was chiefly because of my extreme weakness. Before I had been out an hour I was sorely tempted to return to camp and give it up; but we came upon a fresh trail of a band of gorillas which for some reason or other the guides followed only a short distance, continuing on in the same general direction in which we had started, without any encouragement, until it seemed that we had gone to the crest of the Saddle. There, as the result of a conference between the guides, we started in a southerly direction intending to work in a roundabout way back to camp. Camp was the only thing that I was interested in, for at this time I was practically "done."
Ten minutes later the guides ducked, and crouching, came back and fell in behind me. I took the gun from the bearer, and looking over the tops of the greenery of a little rise in front of us I saw a spot of black fur perhaps fifty yards ahead. As I crouched, waiting for a better view, the animal I was watching climbed up on a nearly horizontal branch of a tree looking back in my direction. In the meantime, the motion-picture camera had been brought to my side. I raised it carefully, put it in position, and all this time another larger gorilla was making the ascent of the horizontal branch of the tree. It was apparently an old mother and her two-year-old baby. Almost before I knew it I was turning the crank of the camera on two gorillas in full view with a beautiful setting behind them. I do not think at the time that I appreciated the fact that I was doing a thing that had never been done before. As I ground away, a second baby came scrambling up a near-by tree. The baby seemed very much interested in the operation. The mother professed indifference and a certain amount of boredom and after a bit pretended to lie down on one arm and go to sleep. The babies, one of them at least, seemed to be amused. He would stand up, fold his arms and slap them against his breast, which suggested uproarious laughter on his part.
When I had turned off about one hundred feet with my heart in my mouth for fear the thing would come to an end too soon, I realized that I had as much of that particular subject as I wanted, there being no great amount of movement. So I changed the two-inch lens for the six-inch lens in order to make a "closeup." When I had taken about three hundred feet I felt that I would like a change of scene; so with my hand on the camera I stood up straight and tried to start a conversation with them. They all bolted.
It was amazing what an effect that minute or two of experience had on me physically. I forgot my weariness and took up the trail. For the next hour we followed them, getting glimpses of them frequently. There were probably ten or twelve in the band; but never again did I get the opportunity to photograph them—just little glimpses of black fur dodging about through the greenery. At one time with my glasses I watched them across a ravine for a considerable time. The old female was lying down on her back yawning and stretching, but she was too far away for a photograph. So finally, feeling that I had about all I could expect from that band, I picked out one that I thought to be an immature male. I shot and killed it and found, much to my regret, that it was a female. As it turned out, however, she was such a splendid large specimen that the feeling of regret was considerably lessened. This female had a baby which was hustled off by the rest of the band. The baby was crying piteously as it went.
This, added to the specimens on hand, brought the material for the group to one old male, two females, and a young male of about four years of age.
That night as I came into camp my mind went back to a certain day eleven years before when I was hunting lions on the Uasin Gishu Plateau with a moving-picture camera. A most wonderful opportunity had then been given me. Full in front of me the native hunters had drawn a lion's charge and killed the lion with their spears. But the opportunity had been as short-lived as it was magnificent, and the kind of camera I had then could not be handled that quickly. As I walked back to camp that night, I was determined to make a naturalist's moving-picture camera that would prevent my missing such a chance if ever such a one came my way again. From 1910 to 1916 I worked on this camera whenever I had a minute to spare. By 1917 I had the pleasure of knowing that it was used on observation planes destined for the battlefields of France. I had myself never had a chance to try my invention, except experimentally, until this trip to Africa. On this expedition I had brought two—a large one for panorama work and a smaller one nicknamed "the Gorilla" for animal work. "The Gorilla" had taken 300 feet of film of the animal that had heretofore never been taken alive in its native wilds by any camera, still or moving. Few things have given me greater satisfaction than the realization that the failure of 1910 had led directly to the success of 1921.
To make assurance doubly sure, as night came on I had a fire made in the door of my tent and comforted by its warmth I took a little piece of the end of the film and developed it. It was all right. I took another sample from the middle. It, too, came out strong. I was satisfied—more satisfied than a man ever should be—but I revelled in the feeling.