CHAPTER XII 
ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO 
HE day after I shot my first gorilla on the 
slopes of Mikeno I spent in camp. I should 
have preferred to spend it resting, for the day 
before had been a strenuous one, especially for a man 
suffering from blood poisoning, as I was. I had had 
it for some time and had lost about twenty pounds 
during the preceding three weeks. This left me in a 
weakened condition and a rest would have been wel- 
come. Had I been hunting merely to kill I should 
have laid offa day. But science is a jealous mistress 
and takes little account of a man’s feelings. I had 
skinned the old gorilla roughly in the field the day 
before. If I wanted properly to preserve the speci- 
men, there was no time to be lost. I set the Negroes 
at work cleaning the skeleton, keeping an eye on them 
as I worked at other things to see that they did not 
lose any of the bones. I had personally to take care 
of the feet, hands, and head. This latter I set up 
and photographed. Then I made a death mask of 
the face. The brains and internal organs I had to 
preserve in formalin. The whole business was a full 
hard day’s work. One of the chief difficulties with 
scientific collecting is the necessity for doing all the 
skinning, cleaning, measuring, and preserving at once. 
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