ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO 217 
I believe, the four-year-old son of the old female. 
He apparently caught on somewhere, for a half hour 
later when we were trying to find a way down we 
came across him and, as he ran about, one of the guides 
speared him. I came up before he was dead. There 
was a heartbreaking expression of piteous pleading 
on his face. He would have come to my arms for 
comfort. 
About this time the chasm filled with a fog so dense 
that we could not move with safety. Another half hour 
and the fog was cleared by a heavy cold rain and 
hail and we continued to search for a way down to 
the dead gorilla. The Negroes had worked earnestly, 
but they gave up and said it could not be done. Poor 
devils, they were stark naked in that icy rain; God 
knows how they lived through it. When they gave 
up they gave up for good apparently, stood shaking 
with cold, making no effort to find shelter from the 
rain. I took off my Burberry raincoat and got seven 
of them under it with me. 
In such proximity to seven naked natives almost 
all of my senses were considerably oppressed and I 
was grateful when the rain lessened so that I might 
put them at a more respectful as well as a more com- 
fortable distance. The others had huddled under 
an old tree root. All came out and we looked over 
the situation. We were on the side of a ridge of 
Mikeno. Where we were there was vegetation and 
a fair foothold. Below and above us were stretches 
of sheer rock. Not far from us a little stream fell 
off the shelf where we were, in a clear fall of 200 feet. 
