284 THE GORILLA AT HOME. 



It is not true, M. du Chaillu thinks, that the animal lives 

 much or at all on trees, although he believes it often climbs trees 

 to pick the berries or nuts, on which in part it feeds, and for the 

 purpose of breaking which, it is endowed with such enormously 

 powerful jaws and teeth. He almost always found the animal 

 on the ground ; and on several occasions he came upon fresh 

 traces of its bed, and could see that the animal had seated 

 himself with his back against a tree-trunk. This, it appears, is 

 the usual habit of the male, and on the back there is generally a 

 bare patch in consequence. 



M. du Chaillu again disputes such stories, as, that the Gorilla 

 attacks the elephant that it carries off women from the native 

 villages that it builds itself a house of leaves and twigs, and 

 sits on the roof all of which the natives firmly believe, with a 

 good many other stories to boot ; but of the truth of which there 

 is no evidence whatever. 



The Gorilla, as M. du Chaillu presents him to us, is a huge 

 creature whose height, when erect, usually varies from five Jeet 

 two inches to five feet eight inches covered with iron-gray hair 

 living in the loneliest and darkest portions of the jungle 

 preferring nigged heights and wooded valleys, where the surface 

 is strewn with immense boulders. It is a restless nomadic 

 beast, wandering from place to place in search of food, consisting 

 of berries, nuts, pine-apple leaves, and other vegetable matter, of 

 which it eats an enormous quantity, as is shown by its vast 

 paunch, which protrudes before it when it stands upright. 

 Usually, however, the Gorilla walks on all fours; but, the amis 

 being very long, the head and breast are considerably raised, and 

 the animal appears, as he moves along, to be half erect. In 

 walking thus, the back of the fingers, not the palm of the hand, 

 is placed on the ground ; and the leg and arm on the same side 

 move together, so as to give the animal a curious waddle. The 

 first sight M. du Chaillu had of the Gorilla was afforded by four 

 young ones, of which he just caught a glimpse as they were 

 running off in this fashion towards the depths of the forest. He 

 fired without hitting either of them ; but so fearfully like hairy 

 men did they look as they ran their heads down and their 

 bodies inclined forward that M. du Chaillu tells us, he " felt 

 almost like a murderer " in merely attempting to bring them 

 down. 



