In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

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.