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Updated: June 9, 2025
And now, you see, we arrive at really the most interesting part of my travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. the manners and habits of the Gorillas chez eux. I give the heads of this narrative only, the full account being suppressed for a reason which shall presently be given. The heads, then, of the chapters, are briefly as follows: The author's arrival in the Gorilla country.
So it is with the poor African. You may take a dozen specimens of both sexes from the lowest type of man found in Africa; their race has been buried for ages in ignorance and barbarism, and you can scarcely perceive that they have any more of manhood or womanhood than so many orang-outangs or gorillas.
Secondly, the adult crania of Gorillas which have as yet been measured differ among themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being 34.5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and, thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, the cranial capacities of some of the lower Apes fall nearly as much, relatively, below those of the higher Apes as the latter fall below Man.
Now we have anatomy cited to belittle the difference between a hand and a foot, and geology importuned to show us the missing link, pending which an order has been instituted roomy enough to hold monkeys, gorillas, and men. It is a strange perversity.
Upon the shelf were a number of skulls and jaws in admirable condition and graded arrangement, beginning to the left with that flat kind of skull which one associates with gorillas. He resumed his scolding harangue, and for a few brief moments I understood him.
Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it worked. The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very well, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one particular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the Trades Unions thought.
Each man has brought with him his best gun, loaded to the muzzle, and tied on to the baggage against which I am leaning the muzzles sticking out each side of my head: the flint locks covered with cases, or sheaths, made of the black-haired skins of gorillas, leopard skin, and a beautiful bright bay skin, which I do not know, which they say is bush cow but they call half a dozen things bush cow.
'Mine always has gorillas ridin' 'em. Well, I looked around and I would have been scared myself if I hadn't recognized our own bunch of snakes, each one of 'em with the tail of the snake in front of him in his mouth. Old 'Limber Larry' we called him that on account of his habit of going to sleep curled up in a true lover's knot was in the lead, and behind him came about half a mile of snakes.
He fell ill again and had to rest a long time in his miserable hut, where he lay on his bed of grass reading his tattered Bible, or listening to the native's tales of combats with men and apes, for gorillas lived in the forests. Thus year after year passed by, and not the faintest whisper from the noisy world reached his ears. The only thing that retained him was the Lualaba.
Lord Vincent, it was supposed, did not like the arrangement, and stigmatized the black servants as "gorillas," but Lady Vincent, it was confidently asserted, never deigned to consult his lordship, or pay the slightest attention to his prejudices. And so matters stood for the present. All this was communicated to Ishmael by Reuben and Hannah.
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