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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.

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 about them by-and-by. you shall have a good deal to tell 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.

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

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