THE TERRIBLE. 



which it is invested are, however, more than 

 imaginary. The young athletic negroes, in their 

 ivory hunts, well know the prowess of the gorilla. 

 He does not, like the lion, sullenly retreat on see- 

 ing them, but swings himself rapidly down to the 

 lower branches, courting the conflict, and clutches 

 at the foremost of his enemies. The hideous as- 

 pect of his visage, his green eyes flashing with 

 rage, is heightened by the thick and prominent 

 brows being drawn spasmodically up and down, 

 with the hair erect, causing a horrible and fiendish 

 scowl. Weapons are torn from their possessors' 

 grasp, gun-barrels bent and crushed in by the 

 powerful hands and vice-like teeth of the enraged 

 brute. More horrid still, however, is the sudden 

 and unexpected fate which is often inflicted by 

 him. Two negroes will be walking through one 

 of the woodland paths, unsuspicious of evil, when 

 in an instant one misses his companion, or turns 

 to see him drawn up in the air with a convulsed 

 choking cry ; and in a few minutes dropped to the 

 ground a strangled corpse. The terrified survivor 

 gazes up, and meets the grin and glare of the 

 fiendish giant, who, watching his opportunity, 

 had suddenly put down his immense hind-hand, 

 caught the wretch by the neck with resistless 

 power, and dropped him only when he ceased to 

 struggle. Surely a horrible improvised gallows 

 this !* 



The pursuit of the whale, whether that species 

 which our hardy mariners seek amidst the ice-floes 

 of the Polar Seas, or the still huger kind which 

 wallows in the boundless Pacific, is one full of 

 peril, and its annals are crowded with strange 

 and terrible adventures. Swift and sudden 

 deaths ; the shattering of a boat into fragments, 

 ♦See Prof. Owen on the Gorilla (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1859.) 

 245 



