Lost in the Jungle; Narrated for Young People

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

We could do nothing with the gorilla, so the Ashiras took as much meat out of his body as they could conveniently carry. We cut his head off and carried it with us. It was a huge and horrible head. Looking at his enormous canine teeth, I saw at once that the monster must have had a tremendous fight a year or two before, for one of them had been broken off in the socket of the jaw. What a grand sight it must be to see a gorilla fight! This reminded me of the stories I had sometimes heard from the natives regarding the fearful conflicts the male gorillas have among themselves for the possession of a wife. Indeed, the fight that this one was engaged in must have been a severe one, for not only had one of his large teeth been broken, but one of his arms was shorter than the other, and had evidently been broken and united again, not, I am sure, by a surgeon-gorilla, for I do not believe they have any, but nature and time were the healing processes. There is a skeleton of a gorilla in the British Museum, the arm of which had been broken, no doubt, in some conflict, but when the animal was killed the wound had healed, and the bones of the arm had united.

Minsho promised to tell us the story of a fight between two gorillas in the evening by the camp-fire.

How tremendous that blow must have been, I thought, in order to break that powerful muscular and thick-set bony arm! The forest must have been filled with the loud yells of the monster as he fought desperately against his enemy.

We continued our way after fording a stream about one hundred and twenty feet wide, called the Louvendji, carrying our gorilla's head with us, and toward dusk built our camp. After we had seated ourselves by the fireside, and I had taken my own modest meal, Minsho got up, after filling himself with gorilla meat, and said, "Moguizi, I promised you, after you had killed this big gorilla this morning, that I would tell you a gorilla story. Are you ready to hear it?" "I am ready to hear it," I said, and all the party shouted "All are ready to hear it."

"Long ago," said he, "before I was born, and in the time of my father—for the story I am going to tell you is from my father—there was a terrible gorilla fight in the woods. My father had been cutting down trees in the forest in order to make a plantation, and was returning home, when suddenly he heard, not far from him, the yells of gorillas, and he knew that the beasts were coming quickly toward him.

"Not far from where he stood there was a large hollow tree, into which he at once entered and hid himself, for he was afraid of the gorillas. He had with him only his axe, and of course could not dream of fighting the gorillas, especially as there were two of them. He had hardly entered his hiding-place before the gorillas made their appearance. My father trembled with fear lest they should discover where he was, but they were so enraged at each other that they did not busy themselves about what surrounded them."

Minsho was getting excited, and his eyes began to sparkle as he came to the fighting part of his story. There was a pause and a dead silence, for we wanted to hear about the fight of the two gorillas. Minsho suddenly gave a tremendous yell in the Ashira fashion. "Now," said he, "open your ears, for you are going to hear what my father saw.

"The two gorillas seized each other and rolled on the ground, yelling. One at last gave the other a bite, which made his enemy give an awful shriek of pain. They then got up, their faces covered with blood, their bodies lacerated, and, looking fiercely at one another with their deep-sunken eyes, each gave a yell of defiance, and both slowly advanced again; then the larger, which was probably the elder, stopped, both wanting rest in order to breathe, and then they pounced upon each other, screaming, yelling, bellowing, beating their chests, retreating, and advancing. At last they both stood on their hind legs a few rods from each other, their eyes seeming to flash fire, and advanced once more for a deadly fight, when the older and bigger one raised his hand and gave his antagonist a most fearful blow, which broke the other's arm. Immediately the badly-wounded gorilla fled, leaving the old gorilla master of the field; but then the victor was also covered with blood. My father still trembled, for he was afraid of being discovered. After a time, when all was silent, he looked round, and saw that the victorious gorilla had also gone off."

By this time Minsho was covered with perspiration; he fancied, I suppose, that he had seen the fight himself. He concluded by saying, "I have no doubt the gorilla we killed this morning lost one of his big tusks in a great fight with another gorilla," in which opinion we all coincided.

After this story we lay down on our beds of leaves, and, surrounded by blazing fires, all went to sleep, hoping to rest well, for we had a hard day's work before us on the morrow.