178 THE HABITS OF THE GORILLA. 
difficulty remains to be disposed of. He says that the 
gorille defended themselves with stones, and escaped 
over the precipices. Now there are no precipices on the 
coast of the gorilla country, and the gorilla of the nine- 
teenth century is not in the habit of throwing stones. 
The northern limit of its habitat I ascertained to be 
Cape St. John. I have not penetrated to its southern 
limit, but it is probably Loango. No good reason can be 
assigned why the gorilla should not be found wherever 
the chimpanzee is found; but specimens of the former 
have not yet been procured from the backwoods of Sierra 
Leone and Liberia, where the latter ape is met with fre- 
quently enough. How far east the gorilla country ex- 
tends is of course unknown. The Fans are the most in- 
land tribe at present known east of the Gaboon.. They 
told me that in the distant country to the north-east 
whence they came, the gorilla (ngi) was more common 
than in the Gaboon; so common that they could some- 
times hear his cry from their towns. 
The gorilla moves from place to place, but is almost 
always found in the thickest part of the virgin forest. 
His migrations, if they can be so called, are probably de- 
termined by the food seasons. He is very partial to one 
or two kinds of fruit. I was also shown a kind of grass 
growing in small tufts; wherever that grass grows, the 
gorilla is found. 
Waterton says that the monkeys have no home. This 
is certainly true of the gorilla and of the other anthropoid 
_ apes, and it is this which renders it so difficult to shoot 
them in a country which is one vast forest, with here and 
there a meadow or a marsh. The gorilla builds a nest, it 
is true, but not as a residence. The male arranges this 
rude bed of boughs when the female is pregnant ; she is 
