680 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



half feet in bight, came running to its mother, who gave a kind of chuckle that very 

 much resembled the ' click ' of the Bushmen of Southern Africa. I began to be 

 terribly excited. I must kill the mother, and try to capture the young one. Unfortu- 

 nately there were many intervening trees, and she was about a hundred yards off. 

 How could the bullet from my rifle reach her ? I had just left my place of concealment, 

 when she perceived me. She uttered a piercing cry, and disappeared, with her young 

 one following! her." 



FEMALE G'>RILLl AND YOUNG. 



Du Chaillu, in his various expeditions, which occupied in all twelve years, brought 

 away thirty-one gorilla skins and skeletons, captured more than a dozen young ones, 

 and altogether saw more than three hundred of the animals. We give from his book 

 last cited one more picture of the domestic life of the gorilla : 



" The bog was like one of the worst kind we have in America in the overflowed 

 and woody land of the Western country ; only here were creepers, thorny bushes, 

 hanging lianas, and grass that cuts like a razor. We entered the swamp, and came 

 to a dry spot, when we spied a female gorilla and her young baby. The baby was 

 very small, and a very dear little baby it was to its mother, for she appeared to look 

 at it with great fondness. I was spell-bound, and could not raise my gun to fire ; there 

 was something too human in that mother and her offspring, it hung by her breast ; 

 but unlike our babies, who have to be entirely supported, its little hands clutched its 

 mother's shoulder and helped to support itself. The little fellow gave a shrill and 

 plaintive cry, and crawled from its mother's arms to her breast to be fed ; and the 

 mother lowered her head and looked at her child, while with its little fingers it pressed 

 her breast so that the milk should come more treeiy. On a sudden the mother gave 

 a tremendous cry, and before I knew it she had disappeared in the forest." 



As the gorilla is wholly confined to a belt in equatorial Africa, so the great Orang- 

 outang {Simia safyrus) or Mias, as it is called by the natives, is only found in Borneo 



