My first impressions of the gorilla were lasting.
We picked up the trail at daybreak and followed the wanderings of a gorilla band through the forest. It was rough going. Joe, a native of the lower Congo, my one English-speaking companion, who had followed me from the mouth of the Congo 2,000 miles distant to this place, helped me lift and push each man bearing the weight of our outfit over boulder and fallen tree-trunk and up the steep precipitous walls that were among the forest obstacles in our path.
At noon we paused for rest at a place in the forest, which was flat enough to get a toe-hold. The rain had begun to trickle through the trees and with it came a glacial damp, edged with penetrating keenness. The heavens darkened, blotting out the frosty peak of Mikeno, and we took advantage of the scant shelter at hand, thinking all was done for the day when from the forest below came a curious rattling sound like the chattering of teeth. It persisted for a dozen seconds, ceased and was repeated. The men looked at each other and muttered “Engabe” (gorilla).
Then came a deeper boom, a dull, resounding rapid striking, a muffled drumming that carried with it a certain sense of power. It was like the sound of strong men rapidly beating a carpet. A terrific roar filled the forest stillness. Again and again it crashed, deep and guttural, in answer to the echoes that were flung back and forth among the assembled peaks. In the accompanying silence it came to me that down there beyond the leafy screen an old man gorilla was looking up at us and voicing in his roars and chest-beats the ape’s ancient defiance of humankind, a defiance as old as Africa.
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