In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

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.