CHAPTER XII
ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO
The day after I shot my first gorilla on the
slopes of Mikeno I spent in camp. I should
have preferred to spend it resting, for the day
before had been a strenuous one, especially for a man
suffering from blood poisoning, as I was. I had had
it for some time and had lost about twenty pounds
during the preceding three weeks. This left me in a
weakened condition and a rest would have been welcome.
Had I been hunting merely to kill I should
have laid off a day. But science is a jealous mistress
and takes little account of a man's feelings. I had
skinned the old gorilla roughly in the field the day
before. If I wanted properly to preserve the specimen,
there was no time to be lost. I set the Negroes
at work cleaning the skeleton, keeping an eye on them
as I worked at other things to see that they did not
lose any of the bones. I had personally to take care
of the feet, hands, and head. This latter I set up
and photographed. Then I made a death mask of
the face. The brains and internal organs I had to
preserve in formalin. The whole business was a full
hard day's work. One of the chief difficulties with
scientific collecting is the necessity for doing all the
skinning, cleaning, measuring, and preserving at once.
