"With a groan, which had something terribly human in it and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward on his face. The body shook convulsively for a few minutes, the limbs moved about in a struggling way, and then all was quiet-death had done its work, and I had leisure to examine the huge body. It proved to be five feet eight inches high, and the muscular development of the arms and breast showed what immense strength it had possessed."

It appears that the negroes, with all their horror of the Gorilla, are yet exceedingly partial to its flesh, and on this occasion, after the first expression of delight that the monster had been killed, they immediately began to quarrel about the division of the spoil. The brain is especially valued, and is carefully saved for the purpose of making charms, which, prepared in one fashion, gives the wearer a strong hand for the hunt, in another, finds him favour with the gentle sex.

On one occasion, M. du Chaillu's hunters procured him, to his great joy, a young Gorilla alive. It was a little fellow between two and three years old, about two feet six inches in length, and as fierce and stubborn a little rogue as could well be conceived. The hunters had found him in the forest, seated on the ground, eating berries which grew close to the earth, and a few feet farther off sat his mamma, similarly occupied. The mother was killed, and the youngster, taking refuge in a tree, was afterwards secured, though not until one of the men received a severe bite on the hand and another had a piece taken off his leg. "As the little brute, though so diminutive, and the merest baby for age, was astonishingly strong, and by no means good-tempered, they could not lead him. He constantly rushed at them. So they were obliged to get a forked stick, in which his neck was inserted in such a way that he could not escape, and yet could be kept at a safe distance. In this uncomfortable way he was brought into the village. Here the excitement was intense; as the animal was lifted out of the canoe in which he had come a little way down the river, he roared and bellowed, and looked around wildly with his wicked little eyes, giving fair warning that if he could only get at some of us he would take his revenge."

A bamboo cage was at once got ready for Master Joe, as the young gentleman was named, and various attempts were made to evoke a little amiability, but he continued to the end of his days

PERILS OF THE HUNTER.

287

a morose, ill-tempered little beast, and utterly ferocious and intractable. Twice he escaped from confinement, and he died suddenly, at last, chained by the neck, by which means alone he could be kept secure.

In its untameable ferocity of disposition, the young Gorilla is a fair type of the full-grown animal; but in respect to courage and daring, it is just the reverse. The young always run off on all fours, shrieking with fear, as also do the full-grown females, especially if they have young; but with the adult male the case is wholly different. When once the hunter has been so fortunate as to come up with his prey, he need have no fear of its running away again. "In all my hunts and encounters with this animal," says M. du Chaillu, "I never knew a grown male to run off." Once the huge beast sees his foe, there is no sign of fear or disposition to retreat; on the contrary, he prepares at once to advance to the attack, and the only alternative of the hunter is to kill or be killed. It is idle to think of escape, and if his gun misses fire, or fails to give a mortal wound, his death is certain. One blow of that huge paw, with its nails, and the poor hunter's entrails are torn out, his breast-bone broken, or his skull smashed. And to make the matter more perilous still, if possible, the hunter dare not fire until the monster is within eight or nine yards of him, the usual shot being from fourteen to eighteen feet only.

The manner in which the Gorilla advances to the attack is very remarkable. Glaring on the hunter with malign eyes, he beats his breast, and lifting up his head, utters his frightful roar, beginning it with several sharp barks, and then rolling out a long deeply guttural roar. M. du Chaillu says, that he has reason to believe that he has heard this frightful roar at a distance of three miles. The horror of the animal's appearance at this time is beyond description-the short hair of the scalp and the skin of the forehead are quickly drawn backwards and forwards— his huge teeth are ground violently together, and his wrinkled face is contorted with ferocious excitement. In this way the animal advances a short distance, and then stops again to utter his terrible roar, and to beat his vast breast, which sends forth a hollow reverberation that may be heard at a great distance. At times he seats himself for a few moments still glaring on his assailant, and beating his breast; and thus stage by stage, in the wildest excitement of passion, scowling with fiendish rage, the

288

ATTACK OF THE GORILLA.

huge beast, erect and defiant, approaches the hunter, who waits in terrible suspense the moment to fire. The vast breast is a mark which, if the hunter is cool, it is not difficult to hit; and when the time comes the gun is quickly raised, and if the shot is fairly delivered, the Gorilla falls. It is a fortunate thing for the hunter that the beast dies very readily, having nothing of that extreme tenacity of life which characterises many wild animals.

It is unnecessary here to follow M. du Chaillu into the further details of his adventures with this enormous Ape, nor is it necessary to enter upon any discussion as to the proper place which the Gorilla occupies in the series of Apes, with respect to the nearness of its approach to the human race. The young reader will probably be content to know that Professor Owen, the king of animals, places the monster at the very top of the list, as the one which makes, on the whole, the nearest approach to the genus homo; but that it is still separated from it by a broad impassable gulf of organic difference. In fine, the Gorilla is a huge ferocious Ape, and nothing more, and is not for a moment to be thought of as having any ancestral connection with the human family.

INDEX.

Butterflies, eagerness of the collectors Cydippe, structure and habits of, 35,