Lost in the Jungle; Narrated for Young People

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

Oh, how I longed to kill a guanionien; but I never was able to do it. Once I examined one, but it was dead, and had been killed by spears as it had come down and seized a goat. The natives had kept it for me; but when I returned to the village it was quite spoiled and decomposed, the feathers having dropped out.

Several times I was on the point of killing one, but never was in time.

My men went hunting that morning, while I remained alone in the camp, for I felt tired, and wanted to write up my journal, and to describe all the things I had seen or heard during the past few days.

In the afternoon I thought I would ramble round. I took a double-barreled smooth-bore gun, and loaded one side with a bullet in case I should see large game; the other barrel I loaded with shot No. 2. Then I carefully plunged into the woods till I reached the banks of a little stream, and there I heard the cry of the mondi (Colobus Satanus), which is one of the largest monkeys of these forests. From their shrill cries, I thought there must be at least half a dozen together. I was indeed glad that I had one barrel loaded with big shot. If the mondis were not too far off, I would be able to get a fair shot, and kill one.

I advanced very cautiously until I got quite near to them. I could then see their big bodies, long tails, and long, jet-black, shining hair. What handsome beasts they were! what a nice-looking muff their skins would make! I thought.

Just as I was considering which of them I would fire at, I saw some big thing, like a large shadow, suddenly come down upon the tree. Then I heard the flapping of heavy wings, and also the death-cry of a poor mondi. Then I saw a huge bird, with a breast spotted somewhat like a leopard, raise itself slowly into the air, carrying the monkey in its powerful finger-like talons. The claws of one leg were fast in the upper part of the neck of the monkey; so deep were they in the flesh that they were completely buried, and a few drops of blood fell upon the leaves below. The other leg had its claws quite deep into the back of the monkey. The left leg was kept higher than the right, and I could see that the great strength of the bird was used at that time to keep the neck, and also the back of the victim, from moving. The bird rose higher and higher, the monkey's tail swayed to and fro, and then both disappeared. It was a guanionien. Its prey was, no doubt, taken to some big tree where it could be devoured.

The natives say that the first thing the guanionien does is to take out the eyes of the monkeys they catch. But there must be a fearful struggle, for these mondis are powerful beasts, and do not die at the eagle's will. There must be a great trial of strength; for if the monkey is not seized at an exact place on the neck, he can turn his head, and he then inflicts a fearful bite on the breast of the eagle, or on his neck or leg, which disables his most terrible enemy, and then both, falling, meet their death.

I looked on without firing. The monkeys seemed paralyzed with fear when the eagle came down upon them, and did not move until after the bird of prey had taken one of their number, and then decamped. When I looked for them they had fled for parts unknown to me in the forest. I was looking so intently at the eagle and its prey that for a while I had forgotten the mondis. I do not wonder at it, for monkeys I could see often, but it is only once in a great while that such a scene as I witnessed could be seen by a man. It was grand; and I wondered not that the natives called the guanionien the leopard of the air. As I write these lines, though several years have passed away, I see still before me that big, powerful bird carrying its prey to some unknown part of the forest.

Long after the time I have been speaking to you about, I was hunting in the forest, when I came to a spot where I saw on the ground more than a hundred skulls of various animals, and of monkeys of all sizes, from those of baby monkeys to those of large mandrills; and there were two or three skulls of young chimpanzees. What a ghastly sight it was! Some of these skulls seemed almost fresh; they were skulls of all the species of monkeys found in the forest.