HUNTING GORILLAS 193 
On the day that Du Chaillu saw the first gorilla 
ever seen by a white man his black and savage attend- 
ants had assuaged a hunger that beset the party by 
eating a snake. This was more than Du Chaillu 
could do. His account* reads: 
When the snake was eaten, and I, the only empty-stomached 
individual of the company, had sufficiently reflected on the dis- 
advantages of being bred in a Christian country, we began to look 
about the ruins of the village near which we sat. A degenerate 
kind of sugar-cane was growing on the very spot where the 
houses had formerly stood, and I made haste to pluck some of 
this and chew it for the little sweetness it had. But, as we 
were plucking, my men perceived what instantly threw us all 
into the greatest excitement. Here and there the cane was 
beaten down, torn up by the roots, and lying about in fragments 
which had evidently been chewed. 
I knew that these were fresh tracks of the gorilla, and joy 
filled my heart. My men looked at each other in silence, and 
muttered Nguwy/az, which is as much as to say in Mpongwe, 
Nina, or, as we say, gorilla. 
We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints 
of the so-long-desired animal. It was the first time I had ever 
seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescribable. 
Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face 
that monster of whose ferocity, strength, and cunning the natives 
had told me so much; an animal scarce known to the civilized 
world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart 
beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the gorilla, 
and my feelings were really excited to a painful degree. 
By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been 
several gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow 
them. 
The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a 
good escort of two or three men to take care of them and reas- 
sure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully 
*Reprinted through the courtesy of Harper & Bros., publishers of Du-Chaillu’s book, 
** Equatorial Africa.” 
