On the day that Du Chaillu saw the first gorilla ever seen by a white man his black and savage attendants had assuaged a hunger that beset the party by eating a snake. This was more than Du Chaillu could do. His account[1] reads:
When the snake was eaten, and I, the only empty-stomached
individual of the company, had sufficiently reflected on the disadvantages
of being bred in a Christian country, we began to look
about the ruins of the village near which we sat. A degenerate
kind of sugar-cane was growing on the very spot where the
houses had formerly stood, and I made haste to pluck some of
this and chew it for the little sweetness it had. But, as we
were plucking, my men perceived what instantly threw us all
into the greatest excitement. Here and there the cane was
beaten down, torn up by the roots, and lying about in fragments
which had evidently been chewed.
I knew that these were fresh tracks of the gorilla, and joy filled my heart. My men looked at each other in silence, and muttered Nguyla, which is as much as to say in Mpongwe, Ngina, 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 indescribable. 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 civilized world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the gorilla, and my feelings were really excited to a painful degree.
By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been several gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow them.
The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a good escort of two or three men to take care of them and reassure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully
- ↑ Reprinted through the courtesy of Harper & Bros., publishers of Du Chaillu's book, "Equatorial Africa."
