until I heard Wiki make a peculiar small sound, and looking
at him saw his face was working in an awful way as he clutched
his throat with his hand violently.
Heavens ! think I, this gentleman’s going to have a fit ; it s
lost we are entirely this time. He rolled his head to and fro,
and then buried his face into a heap of dried rubbish at the
foot of a plantain stem, clasped his hands over it, and gave
an explosive sneeze. The gorillas let go all, raised themselves
up for a second, gave a quaint sound between a bark and
a howl, and then the ladies and the young gentleman started
home. The old male rose to his full height (it struck me at
the time this was a matter of ten feet at least, but for scientific
purposes allowance must be made for a lady s emotions) and
looked straight towards us, or rather towards where that sound
came from. Wiki went off into a paroxysm of falsetto sneezes
the like of which I have never heard ; nor evidently had the
gorilla, who doubtless thinking, as one of his black co-relatives
would have thought, that the phenomenon favoured Duppy,
went off after his family with a celerity that was amazing the
moment he touched the forest, and disappeared as they had,
swinging himself along through it from bough to bough, in a
way that convinced me that, given the necessity of getting
about in tropical forests, man has made a mistake in getting
his arms shortened. I have seen many wild animals in their
native wilds, but never have I seen anything to equal gorillas
going through bush ; it is a graceful, powerful, superbly perfect
hand-trapeze performance.1
After this sporting adventure, we returned, as I usually return
from a sporting adventure, without measurements or the body.
Our first day’s march, though the longest, was the easiest,
though, providentially I did not know this at the time. From
my Woermann road walks I judge it was well twenty-five miles.
It was easiest however, from its lying for the greater part of
i I have no hesitation in saying that the gorilla is the most horrible
wild animal I have seen. I have seen at close quarters specimens of the
most important big game of Central Africa, and, with the exception of
snakes, I have run away from all of them; but although elephants,
leopards, and pythons give you a feeling of alarm, they do not give that
feeling of horrible disgust that an old gorilla gives on account of its
hideousness of appearance.
the way through the gloomy type of forest. All day long we
never saw the sky once.
The earlier part of the day we were steadily going up hill,
here and there making a small descent, and then up again,
until we came on to what was apparently a long ridge, for on
either side of us we could look down into deep, dark, ravinelike
valleys. Twice or thrice we descended into these to cross
them, finding at their bottom a ' small or large swamp with a
river running through its midst. Those rivers all went to Lake
Ayzingo.
We had to hurry because Kiva, who was the only one
among us who had been to Efoua, said that unless we did we
should not reach Efoua that night. I said, “ W hy not stay
for bush ? ” not having contracted any love for a night in a Fan
town by the experience of M’fetta; moreover the Fans
were not sure that after all the whole party of us might not
spend the evening at Efoua, when we did get there, simmering
in its cooking-pots.
Ngouta, I may remark, had no doubt on the subject at all,
and regretted having left Mrs. N. keenly, and the Andande
store sincerely. But these Fans are a fine sporting tribe, and
allowed they would risk i t ; besides, they were almost certain
they had friends at Efoua ; and, in addition, they showed me
trees scratched in a way that was magnification of the condition
of my own cat’s pet table leg at home, demonstrating
leopards in the vicinity. I kept going, as it was my only
chance, because I found I stiffened if I sat down, and they
always carefully told me the direction to go in when they sat
down ; with their superior pace they soon caught me up, and
then passed me, leaving me and Ngouta and sometimes Singlet
and Pagan behind, we, in our turn, overtaking them, with
this difference that they were sitting down when we did so.
About five o’clock I was off ahead and noticed a path which
I had been told I should meet with, and, when met with,
I must follow. The path was slightly indistinct, but by
keeping my eye on it I could see it. Presently I came to a
place where it went out, but appeared again on the other side
of a clump of underbush fairly distinctly. I made a short cut
for it and the next news was I was in a heap, on a lot of spikes,