GORILLAS— PITMAN 267 



locators, by following the tops of the ridges, are likely at once to 

 be aware of any that are about. In this case, shortly after the native 

 huts had been left behind and the valley entered the gorillas were 

 heard on the far side. It did not take long to reach the forest and 

 scrub-covered slope where they were feeding. 



It was then that I had a real surprise. Creeping forward as 

 silently as possible, in the wake of my noiseless nimble guides until 

 the grunts sounded alarmingly close, and agitated bushes and vege- 

 tation could be observed just below us, the leader of the file with a 

 beaming face pointed cautiously, not at the cover below, but up into 

 a tree almost above our party. And there was the old male, silver- 

 backed and magnificent, 30 feet up a tree growing on the steeply 

 sloping hillside; the other four, females and juveniles, all fairly 

 large, were in the bushes below. 



The Wambutte guides fearlessly crept to within 10 paces of the 

 tree — our approach, of course, was screened from view — and the 

 old male at once noticed us and scrutinized us keenly, but went on 

 feeding. He turned to look at us again, had a few more mouthfuls 

 of leaves, and then descending about 6 feet, sat down in a huge up- 

 right fork where the trunk divided, legs dangling, the excessively 

 long arms grasping nearby branches, an interested, though kindly 

 expression on his face, the enormous head framed in a thick fringe 

 of long shaggy hair. 



It is impossible to describe adequately what one felt at that su- 

 preme moment. There before one was something entirely unre- 

 corded and new in connection with the world's largest and most 

 interesting anthropoid, and what a giant he looked spread-eagled 

 on a slanting branch to reach a particularly desirable mouthful. He 

 was so large that at first I could not believe it was one animal, and 

 thought it must be two. 



Having looked our fill at each other, the Wambutte suggested that 

 if we had seen enough we had better withdraw, and so we parted 

 amicably. There had been no undue disturbance, and unconcernedly 

 the gorillas continued to feed where they had been found, and even 

 after we had emerged from the forest on the opposite hillside, their 

 contented grunts could still be heard below. This guttural con- 

 versation, carried on so it appears by a succession of grunts differing 

 in length and varying in key, can be heard at a distance, and, as 

 previously mentioned, renders the location of a troop a comparatively 

 simple matter. 



When I set out to view this troop, which had been originally lo- 

 cated by a villager from a nearby settlement, I was accompanied 

 by six Wambutte, two villagers, and three members of my own 

 staff. After I had seen all I wanted and was about to retrace my 



