20 



muuching fruit, whilst the young Gorillas are at play, leaping and 

 swinging from branch to branch, with hoots or harsh cries of bois- 

 terous mirth. 



If the old male be seen alone, or when in quest of food, he is 

 usually armed with a stout stick, which the negroes aver to be the 

 weapon with which he attacks his chief enemy the elephant. Not 

 that the elephant directly or intentionally injures the Gorilla, but, 

 deriving its subsistence from the same source, the ape regards the 

 great proboscidian as a hostile intruder. When, therefore, he dis- 

 cerns the elephant pulling down and wrenching off the branches of 

 a favourite tree, the Gorilla, stealing along the bough, strikes the 

 sensitive proboscis of the elephant with a violent blow of his club, and 

 drives off the startled giant trumpeting shrilly with rage and pain. 



In passing from one detached tree to another, the Gorilla is said 

 to walk semi-erect, with the aid of his club, but with a waddling 

 awkward gait ; when without a stick, he has been seen to walk as a 

 biped, with his hands clasped aci'oss the back of his head, instinct- 

 ively so counterpoising its forward projection. If the Gorilla be 

 surprised and approached while on the ground, he drops his stick, 

 betakes himself to all-fours, applying the back part of the bent 

 knuckles of his fore-hands to the ground, and makes his way rapidly, 

 with an oblique swinging kind of gallop, to the nearest tree. There 

 he awaits his pursuer, especially if his family be near, and requiring 

 his defence. No negro willingly approaches the tree in which the 

 male Gorilla keeps guard. Even with a gun the experienced negro 

 does not make the attack, but reserves his fire in self-defence. The 

 enmity of the Gorilla to the whole negro race, male and female, is 

 uniformly attested. 



The young men of the Gaboon tribe make armed excursions into 

 the forests, in quest of ivory. The enemy they most dread on 

 these occasions is the Gorilla. If they have come unawares too near 

 him with his family, he does not, like the lion, sulkily retreat, 

 but comes rapidly to the attack, swinging down to the lower 

 branches, and clutching at the nearest foe. The hideous aspect of 

 the animal, with his green eyes flashing with rage, is heightened by 

 the skin over the prominent roof of the orbits being drawn rapidly 

 backward and forward, with the hair erected, causing a horrible and 

 fiendish scowl. If fired at and not mortally hit, the Gorilla closes 

 at once upon his assailant, and inflicts most dangerous, if not deadly 

 wounds, with his sharp and powerful tusks. The commander of a 

 Bristol trader told the author he had seen a negro at the Gaboon 

 frightfully mutilated by the bite of the Gorilla, from which he had 

 recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun- 

 barrel bent and partly flattened by the bite of a wounded Gorilla, in 

 its death-struggle. Negroes, when stealing through the gloomy 

 shades of the tropical forest, become sometimes aware of the proxi- 

 mity of one of these frightfully formidable apes by the sudden dis- 

 appearance of one of their companions, who is hoisted up into the 

 tree, uttering, perhaps, a short choking cry. In a few minutes he 



