Return to the River. 
1 75 
sidering what he was, and there was a suggestion 
of ear lobe which gave his countenance a pecu¬ 
liarly human look. He had not undergone the 
inhuman Hebrew-Abyssinian operation to which 
M. du Chaillu’s gorillas had been exposed, and 
the proportions rendered him exceedingly re¬ 
markable. 
That interesting anthropoid’s career after death 
was one series of misfortunes, ending with being 
stuffed for the British Museum. My factotum sat 
up half the night skinning, but it was his first 
coup d’essai. In a climate like the Gaboon, 
especially during the rains, we should have turned 
the pelt “hairy side in,” filled it with cotton to 
prevent shrinking, and, after painting on arsenic, 
have exposed it to the sun : better still, we should 
have placed it on a scaffolding, like a defunct Congo- 
man, over a slow and smoky fire, and thus the fatty 
matter which abounds in the integuments would 
have been removed. The phalanges of the hands 
and feet, after being clean-scraped, were restored 
to their places, and wrapped with thin layers of 
arsenicated cotton, as is done to small animals, 
yet on the seventh day decomposition set in ; it 
was found necessary to unsew the skin, and again 
to turn it inside out. The bones ought to have 
been removed, and not replaced till the coat was 
thoroughly dry. The skinned spoils were placed 
upon an ant-hill; a practice which recalls to mind 
