Gorilla

“ Horribly human and yet inhuman in appearance, the gorilla lives in these trackless forests of beautiful hard-wood trees where flowering plants climb over trunk and bough in a riot of color and where the underbrush is so tangled as to be almost impassable. With the strength of a dozen men in his tremendous barrel-like chest and his over-long arms, is combined a ferocity unparalleled amongst wild beasts.
But Frank was not even thinking of gorillas as he forced his way through the thickets, admiring the beauty of blossoms which for the most part he had never seen before. ”

“ The gorilla, they say, is going fast, and the African elephant. These marvels of life, these strange and wonderful beings of whose vitality and impulses we know so little, are being killed because they are insufficiently protected. Their chief slaughterers are patriotic collectors, and the fewer the survivors the hotter is the competition for specimens to adorn their beastly national collections. Yet the gorilla belongs not to the flag that claims its habitat but to all mankind. ”

“ As you know, the world was made for the gorilla, and when he appeared he was in all the glory of his present strength and beauty. He was the last and highest of Nature’s productions, the ideal creature of the universe. True, there were others larger and stronger—on land and in water—lions, tigers, elephants, and the like, whales, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses; but these were of low caste, creatures with whom he could have no intercourse on terms of equality, and whom he could generally meet only as his natural enemies. For you must have observed that those who are below us hate us ”

“ I confess that I never was more excited in my life. For years I had heard of the terrible roar of the gorilla, of its vast strength, its fierce courage if, unhappily, only wounded by a shot. I knew that we were about to pit ourselves against an animal which even the tiger of these mountains fears and which, perhaps, has driven the lion out of this territory; for the king of beasts, so numerous [Pg 195] elsewhere in Africa, is never met in the land of the gorilla. ”

“ The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all living things flee before him. ”

“ Whether this incident in the history of our species is to be altogether deplored, I do not feel competent to decide. True, the perfection of the gorilla form and the purity of its traits were preserved. We remained at the head of the animal creation, unequalled in our combination of beauty and strength; but might we not by this profferred alliance have been elevated? Might we not have hoped to add to all our other superiority the beauty and the power of wings? Might we not have become as the angels—nay, very angels ourselves? ”

“ If the gorilla climbs a tree in search of food, he again climbs down the same trunk. Also at the approach of danger he is not capable of swinging himself from tree to tree as the chimpanzee does.
The hand of the gorilla is as interesting to me as his foot. If you look at the illustration of the plaster cast you will see that it looks much like a man's, fingernails and all. You will see that the fingers are bent over. When running he puts his knuckles on the ground. It is a peculiarity of the gorilla that when his arms are extended his fingers are always bent over. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A GREAT GORILLA. 77After I had followed the woods along the sea-shore for a while I suddenly came to a place where a large male gorilla had been: the foot-prints were of enormous size and he must have been a monstrous fellow.
This place was not further than three feet from the beach, and I could distinctly see by the foot-prints of the monster that it had been on all-fours and suddenly had raised itself to an erect posture; while the bending of a branch about eight or nine feet high, just above the marks, showed that the animal had supported himself by it. ”

“ But the researches of this indefatigable and intrepid explorer have proved that the gorilla is, as the negroes reported him to be, a most terrible animal to encounter. When found, he often comes forward to meet the hunter, roaring like a great lion, and beating his breast in defiance. If a rifle-ball does not quickly put an end to him, he will rush upon his assailants, and one blow from his powerful arm will be enough to stretch a man senseless or dead upon the ground. ”

“ Chief amongst these interesting beings, whose general appearance, in spite of their hairiness, their semi-quadrupedal gait and their arboreal habits, distinguishes them amongst all other animals, as being next-of-kin to man, stands the great gorilla, who lives its life in the half-twilight gloom of the forests of equatorial Africa. ”

“ Around the male gorilla, on account of its enormous size and strength, coupled in recent years with frequent lapses from grace provoked by unnecessary and undue interference, there has been woven and unfortunately published a fantasy of inaccuracy and exaggeration—so much so that the very homely old male is visualized as an object of dread. The male gorilla, as the family head, is most solicitous for the welfare of his wives and children—a very human trait. ”

“ But the gorilla, too, has had his vicissitudes. Indeed, we may say that, like man, he has had his fall. Unlike man, however, he rose again, until he re-attained his present glorious perfection of form and feature. We fell, my quadrumanous friends, through the frailty and fickleness of the female sex. That charming and no less useful half of our race has also been its bane and its torment for many centuries. To them we owe the humiliating fact that gorillas once had tails, and that some even of our cousins are still afflicted with that ridiculous, although sometimes useful, appendage. ”

“ In view of these facts alone, I am inclined to believe that after all, the sound described is made by the chimpanzee and not by the gorilla.
Another case in which the gorilla is portrayed is wrong. The female gorilla is represented as carrying her young clinging to her waist. I have seen the mother in the forest with her young mounted upon her back, with its arms around her neck and its feet hooked in her armpits. I have never seen the male carry the young, but in a number of specimens of advanced age I have seen a mark upon the back and sides which indicates that he does so. ”

“ The great gorilla, which I discovered, is the terror of the natives, and is called by them the Giant of the Forest. The strong man of the woods wanders continually in search of fruits, berries, and nuts. When night comes he sleeps at the foot of a tree, while his wife, the female gorilla, is sleeping on its branches. The gorilla never makes a shelter or a house for himself. ”

“ Thick tangles of tough-stalked creepers intertwining with thorny plants, like briars of gigantic growth, next barred our path in places which were thereby made absolutely impenetrable. At length, after threading our way through tracks which the wild animals had slightly made, we reached those darkest densest portions of the woods where the Fan hunter knew that the gorilla could be only found, if found at all. ”

“ If you look at the human and the gorilla skeletons side by side, you will perceive a great difference in their structure and readily understand how the locomotion of the gorilla on his hind-feet alone would not be altogether convenient. The fore-legs, or arms, of the gorilla are very much longer than those of man, and also very much stronger. A man unarmed could offer no practical resistance to a gorilla, and all who have hunted him understand this fact."
"Do they hunt him with anything else than guns?" ”

“ All hunters and explorers who have met the gorilla in its native land agree on one point, and that is that the stuffed specimen gives no idea of the apparent height, or looks of the brute when alive in its own forests. It would be hard to picture a more fiendish looking creature. Its eyes are shifty and cruel, while its cheek bones and eye brows are large and lowering. Its teeth stick out, giving it a most ferocious look. When alive it appears to be much larger than it really is. Its great breadth of chest and length of limb seems to shrink up when it is dead. ”

“ The gorilla illustrates in the extreme the specializations which are begun in the chimpanzee, and which are attributable to a life partly arboreal, partly terrestrial, with the skull and jaws used as powerful fighting organs. The head is lengthened by the forward growth of the muzzle into an extreme prognathism. The limbs and body of the gorilla show a departure from the primitive, slender-limbed, arboreal type of apes and are partly adapted to a bipedal, ground-dwelling habit. ”

“ Finally came the story that is current among all the tribes who are acquainted with the habits of the gorilla, that this animal will hide himself in the lower branches of a tree, and there lie in wait for people who go to and fro. When one passes sufficiently near, the gorilla grasps the luckless fellow with his powerful feet, which he uses like giants' hands, and, drawing the man up in to the tree, he quietly chokes him there. ”

“ With its foot the gorilla can steady itself in climbing and hold fast to objects from which the rigid foot of man would slide away. Still our feet are not wholly unfit for grasping, and you may have noticed barefooted boys cutting up "monkey-shines" on trees with entire safety to themselves, though not to the complete satisfaction of their parents. The female gorilla seems to consider her young one safe when he is up the tree; but the anxious human mother does not feel easy until the child is on the ground again. ”

“ The mother gorilla has only one baby gorilla at a time. My men and I have captured a good many of their young ones during the time I lived in the great forest of Equatorial Africa, but I never succeeded in taming one. Some were more fierce or stubborn than others, but all refused food that was cooked; the berries, nuts, and fruits must come from the forest. ”

“ The gorilla (Anthropopithecus gorilla, fig. 8) , of which there are likewise several local forms, ranging from the West Coast through the forest-tract to East Central Africa, and apparently best regarded as sub-species, is frequently made the type of a second genus—Gorilla; but is extremely close to the chimpanzee, from which it is perhaps best distinguished by its much smaller ears. It is the largest of the apes, although the females are greatly inferior in stature and bulk to the males. ”

“ Any one who has seen the skull of an adult gorilla, and noticed the vast jaw-bones, the enormous teeth, and the high bony ridges down the head which afford attachment to the muscles, can easily understand the terrible force of a gorilla’s bite. The teeth, and not the paws, are the chief, if not the only weapons which the animal employs ”

“ This is the home of the gorilla, which grows from five to six feet high, of powerful build, and with arms that can stretch from seven to nine feet; a formidable enemy to meet. It is also the home of that wonderfully varied and gigantic animal life—elephants, lions, leopards, zebras, giraffes, rhinoceri, hippopotami, crocodile etc., which distinguishes African Zoology from that of every other continent. ”

“ The thrilling stories about gorillas stealing women and holding them as captives in the bush, and of their taking children and holding them for ransom, are mere freaks of fancy, and I can find no native of the land in which the gorilla is found who believes that such a thing ever occurred, but all assert that man, woman, and child fare alike in the hands of this cruel beast. ”

“ Lobsters clawed them, sharks snapped at them, and whales took offensive liberties with them. On land the result was an inextricable entanglement. At times the whole community would be tied up in one indistinguishable knot, like the worms in a man’s bait-box. It was proposed to cut off the tails with sharp flints or clam shells; and this was tried; but the tail was so very large and the gorilla so very small in proportion, that it was the gorilla that died, while the tail lived, wriggled down to the shore, and swam off to sea. ”

“ The most respectable matrons of our race scoffed, and sniffed, and turned up their noses at the little stranger. A gorilla with a tail! And they were right; the serpent had indeed entered our Eden. But Brunhilda was devoted to her married Siegfried, and produced at regular intervals new tailed-gorillas; more, the demon of love, or of curiosity, took possession of the young lady gorillas. ”

“ Not many people have shot gorillas and almost none have studied them in their native habitat. The gorilla is one of the most remarkable and least known large animals in the world, and when is added to that the fact that he is the nearest to man of any other member of the animal kingdom, a gorilla expedition acquires a tremendous fascination. ”

“ Anne, tells me that he has twice seen a family of gorillas feeding in a plantain grove, and that, on both occasions, the father gorilla sat quietly eating the fruit which the others gathered and brought to him. I have learned from other reliable sources that gorillas are often seen in groups or families of twelve or fifteen, and always have one which seems to be chief among them, and this one the natives call ekombo n’jina, which means gorilla king.
It is the current belief that these groups consist of one adult male, and a number of females and their young. ”