I retired to my hut with a valiant heart; I was going to do great things.

If you had been in my place, boys, would you not have felt the same? Would you have left the gorillas alone? I am sure you all shout at once, "No! no!" Would you have left the elephants go unmolested in the forest? Certainly not," will be your answer.

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And what about the chimpanzee, and the big leopards who carry away so many people and eat them, the huge buffaloes, the wild boars, the antelopes, and the gazelles? Would you have left the snakes alone?

Perhaps you are all going to say "Yes" to that; and I think you are right, for many of these snakes are very poisonous, and they are numerous in these great forests; for the country I am telling you about is nothing but an immense jungle. When a man is bitten by one of these snakes he often dies in a few minutes. There is also to be found in those woods an immense python, or boa, that swallows antelopes, gazelles, and many other animals. I shall have a good deal to tell you about them by-and-by.

So I resolved that I would try to see all these native tribes; that I would have a peep at the Cannibals; that I would have a good look also at the dwarfs.

I am sure that, if any one of you had been with me on that coast, you would have said to me," Du Chaillu, let us go together and see all these things, and then come back home and tell the good folks all we have seen.”

Yes, I am certain that every one of you would have felt as I did.

CHAPTER III.

A WEEK IN THE WOODS. -A TORNADO.

THE LEOPARDS

PROWLING ABOUT.-I KILL A COBRA AND A SCORPION. FIGHT WITH A BUFFALO.-HUNTING FOR WILD BOARS.A LEOPARD TAKES A RIDE ON A BULL.-SICK WITH THE

FEVER.

Now, boys, fancy yourselves transported into the midst of a very dense and dark forest, where the trees never shed their leaves all at one time, where there is no food to be had except what you can get with your gun, and where wild beasts prowl around you at night while you sleep.

I found myself in such a place.

Immediately after we arrived in those gloomy solitudes we began to build an olako to shelter us from the rains.

I must tell you that Benito is a very strange country. It is situated, as you have seen by the map, near the equator. Of course you know what the equator is? There, at a certain time of the year, the sun is directly above your head at noon, and hence it is the hottest part of the earth. The days and nights are of the same length. The sun rises at six o'clock in the morning, and the sunset takes place at six o'clock in the evening. There is only a difference of a few minutes all the year round. There is no twilight, and half an hour before sunrise or after sunset it is dark. There is no snow B

except on very high mountains. There is no winter. There are only two seasons-the rainy season and the dry season. Our winter-time at home is the time of the rainy season in Equatorial Africa, and it is also the hottest period of the year. It rains harder there than in any other country. No such rain is to be witnessed either in the United States or Europe. And as to the thunder and lightning, you never have heard or seen the like; it is enough to make the hair of your head stand on end! Then come the tornadoes, a kind of hurricane which, for a few minutes, blows with terrible violence, carrying before it great trees. How wild the sky looks! How awful to see the black clouds sweeping through the sky with fearful velocity!

So you will not wonder that we busied ourselves in preparing our shelter, for I remember well it was in the month of February. We took good care not to have big trees around us, for fear they might be hurled upon us by a tornado, and bury us all alive under their weight. Accordingly, we built our olako near the banks of a beautiful little stream, so that we could get as much water as we wanted. Then we immediately began to fell trees. We carried two or three axes with us, for the axe is an indispensable article in the forests. With the foliage we made a shelter to keep off the rain.

While the men were busy building the olako, the women went in search of dried wood to cook our supper. We had brought some food from the village with us.

The

We were ready just in time. A most terrific tornado came upon us. The rain poured down in torrents. thunder was stunning. The lightning flashed so vividly and often as nearly to blind us.