STRENGTH OF THE GORILLA. 
11 
with pain. In passing from one tree to another the Gorilla is said to walk semi-erect witli the aid of 
his club, but with a waddling and awkward gait ; when without a stick, lie has been seen to walk as 
a man, with his hands clasped across the back of his head, instinctively balancing its forward position. 
If the Gorilla be surprised and approached, whatever the ground may be, he betakes himself on all- 
fours, dropping the stick, and makes his way very rapidly, with a kind of sidelong gallop, resting on 
the front knuckles, to the nearest tree. There he meets his pursuer, especially if his family is near 
and requiring his defence. No negro willingly approaches the tree in winch the male Gorilla keeps 
guard, even with a gun. The experienced negro does not make the attack, but reserves his lire in 
self-defence. The enmity of the Gorilla to the whole negro race, male and female, is uniformly attested. 
Thus, when young men of the Gaboon tribe make excursions into the forests in quest of ivory, 
the enemy they most dread to meet 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 orbits and eyebrows being drawn 
rapidly backwards and forwards, with the hair erected, producing 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 once 
saw a negro at the Gaboon frightfully mutilated from the bite of a Gorilla, from which he had 
recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun barrel bent and partly flattened by 
a wounded Gorilla in its death struggle. 
The strength of the Gorilla is such as to make him a match for a lion, whose strength his own 
nearly rivals. Over the Leopard, invading the lower branches of his dwelling-place, he will gain an 
easier victory ; and the huge canine teeth, with which only the male Gorilla is furnished, doubtless 
have been given to him for defending his mate and offspring. 
As the appearance and some of the movements of the Gorilla are very man-like, some of the 
natives consider that the souls of men have entered into their bodies, and hence many apologies are 
made for some of their tricks and reported doings. Moreover, from this belief some of their skulls 
are made objects of fetish worship, and are marked with broad stripes of red paint, crossed by a 
white one. These were the stories told to Savage. 
On returning to America, Savage investigated the parts of the skeletons he had obtained, and 
compared them with those of the Chimpanzee. Owen, in England, having received some corresponding 
specimens, continued the investigation, and all were agreed in deciding that the Gorilla was a species 
in itself, differing from the Chimpanzee, but sufficiently like it to be connected with it in a genus. The 
Gorilla was termed Troglodytes Gorilla , and the Chimpanzee, which will be noticed in the next chapter, 
kept its name of Troglodytes niger. The word Troglodytes was very ill chosen, and it does not refer 
in any way to the nature or habits of the animals. It was taken from rpccyXodvrai, the name of an 
Ethiopian tribe who dwell in holes or caves. The native name is Ngina. 
The descriptions of the habits and anatomy of the Gorilla, fragmentary as they were, excited 
great interest in the minds of many travellers, and especially in that of Du Chaillu, who left 
America in 1855, determined to explore Gorilla Land, and to obtain some of the great Apes, dead 
or alive. 
He first met with the Gorilla amongst some beautiful scenery, near the Sierra del Crystal, at the 
head waters of the Ntambounay, a stream which runs into the Muni or Danger River. Close to some 
rapids down which the torrent was rushing with great velocity amongst huge boulders, and sending its 
spray up to the tops of the highest trees of the banks, was a deserted village, and amongst its ruins 
were some broken-down sugar-canes. Here and there the canes had been taken down, and torn up by the 
roots, and they were lying about in fragments, which, had evidently been chewed. He writes : — “ I 
knew that there were fresh tracks of the Gorilla, and joy filled my heart; they (the native hunters) now 
looked at each other in silence, and muttered, Ngu,yla y which is as much as to say inNepongwe, Xginci , 
or as we say, Gorilla. We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints of the so-long 
desired animal. It was the first time I had ever seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescrib- 
able. Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face that monster of whose ferocity, 
strength, and cunning, the natives had told me so much ; an animal scarce known to the civilised 
