GORILLAS— PITMAN 257 



in the humid valleys, on the lower and more sheltered hillslopes, 

 and, in fact, in any sheltered locality either on the tops or at the 

 sides of the ridges. Tree-fern thickets, with hundreds of fallen 

 thorny stems lying in all directions which cannot be removed, but 

 have to be surmounted, provide some of the most difficult going under 

 general conditions which are notoriously exacting. An hour or two 

 amongst the tree-ferns in a valley bottom will tax one's patience to 

 the utmost, and prove arduous to even the fittest and strongest, 

 though the bare-footed pygmy guides negotiate these nightmare 

 places with the agility of monkeys. 



On the main forest outskirts, and on hillslopes and hilltops on 

 which advancing settlement and cultivation have systematically de- 

 stroyed the trees, there is an abundance of bracken. Plate 5 por- 

 trays a steep hill, in shape like an inverted pudding bowl, a ievi 

 hundred feet high, densely covered with bracken. These bracken- 

 covered slopes provide wonderful refuges for the little red (forest) 

 duiker {Cephalophus nigrifrons kivuensis)^ a creature of about 30 to 

 40 pounds in weight, which is rarely seen. Specimens are only likely 

 to be acquired with the aid of the local inliabitants, who occasionally 

 destroy a few when hunting the destructive bush-pig, whose down- 

 fall is encompassed with well-trained dogs and nets. Some localities 

 show strikingly the sequence of events from the initial deforestation 

 to cultivation. 



The situation was carefully examined in this connection to ascer- 

 tain whether undue deforestation was taking place, and whether 

 there was a likelihood of the gorillas thereby being adversely affected. 

 As far as could be gaged in the limited time available for investi- 

 gation, the destruction of forest is not on an extensive scale, and 

 actually is taking place away from, and not toward, the gorilla 

 haunts. The forest region to the east of the Kishasha River is a 

 gazetted forest reserve and, in consequence, not open for human 

 settlement. There is little likelihood in the immediate future of se- 

 rious conflict between man and gorilla in the dense uninhabitable 

 valleys to the west of this river and in the vicinity of the Belgian 

 Congo border, where the two encounters shortly to be described took 

 place. 



At the time of the respective visits, based on information received 

 from the local Wambutte, and from a prospector who knew the 

 area intimately after operations lasting 18 months, it was calculated 

 that this western area harbored 40 to 50 gorillas. Many of these, if 

 not all, at certain seasons of the year, are believed to cross to the 

 elevated forest reserve to the east of the Kishasha River, so that even 

 if the lapse of time did see undue encroachment on the part of the 

 human population in the western habitat, the gorillas would still 



