"It was not a waterfall, but an immense mountain torrent, dashing downhill at an angle of twenty-five or thirty degrees, for not less than a mile right before us, like a vast, seething, billowy sea.
"The river course was full of the huge granite boulders which lie about here as though the Titans had been playing at skittles in this country; and against these the angry waters dashed as though they would carry all before them, and breaking up, threw the milky spray up to the very tops of the trees which grew along the edge.
"Where we stood, at the foot of the rapids, the stream took a winding turn up the mountains; but we had the whole mile of foaming rapids before us, seemingly pouring its mass of waters down on our heads."
It was just above these falls that Du Chaillu shot an immense serpent. One can imagine the feeling of repulsion with which he saw his men cut off its head and divide the body into pieces, which they roasted and ate with relish.
A short distance beyond the spot, he came upon the footprints of what the natives declared to be gorillas. These footprints were so fresh that it was decided to give chase to the creatures which had made them. The gorillas were, however, very agile, and soon escaped into the forest depths.
Du Chaillu, in speaking of his experience, says: "I protest I felt almost like a murderer when I saw the gorillas the 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 this with their awful cry, which, fierce and animal as it is, has 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.'"
One of the superstitions, common wherever the gorilla is to be found, is that the spirits of certain departed negroes have entered the bodies of a particular species of gorilla. The gorillas of this species can never be caught or killed, since they bear a charmed life. The natives claim, too, that these gorillas show more shrewdness and sense than ordinary animals. In a word, they combine the intelligence of man and the strength and fierceness of the brute creation.
In further description of a gorilla hunt Du Chaillu continues: "I noticed, ahead of us seemingly, a noise as of some one breaking down branches or twigs of trees. This was the gorilla, I knew at once by the eager and satisfied looks of the men.
"They looked once more carefully at their guns, to see if by chance the powder had fallen out of the pans; I also examined mine, to make sure that all was right, and then we marched on cautiously. The singular noise of the breaking of the branches continued. We walked with the greatest care, making no noise at all.