seemed to support his load with much case. Probably habit had
strengthened him for his special work. A large hut was set apart for
our accommodation; a dish of yams, a roast monkey, and a couple of fowls
were sent to us soon after our arrival, and, in short, we experienced
the kindest possible reception.

None of the natives of this village had ever seen a white face in their
lives, and, as may well be imagined, their curiosity and amazement were
unbounded. The people came constantly crowding round our hut,
remaining, however, at a respectful distance, and gazed at us until I
began to fear they would never go away.

Here we remained for three weeks, during which time Jack's wounds healed
up, and his strength returned rapidly. Peterkin and I employed
ourselves in alternately tending our comrade, and in scouring the
neighbouring woods and plains in search of wild animals.

As we were now approaching the country of the gorilla--although, indeed,
it was still far distant--our minds began to run more upon that terrible
creature than used to be the case; and our desire to fall in with it was
increased by the strange accounts of its habits and its tremendous power
that we received from the natives of this village, some of whom had
crossed the desert and actually met with the gorilla face to face. More
than once, while out hunting, I have been so taken up with this subject
that I have been on the point of shooting a native who appeared
unexpectedly before me, under the impression that he was a specimen of
the animal on which my thoughts had been fixed.

One day about a week after our arrival, as I was sitting at the side of
Jack's couch relating to him the incidents of a hunt after a buffalo
that Makarooroo and I had had the day before, Peterkin entered with a
swaggering gait, and setting his rifle down in a corner, flung himself
on the pile of skins that formed his couch.

"I'll tell you what it is," said he, with the look and tone of a man who
feels that he has been unwarrantably misled--"I don't believe there's
such a beast as a gorilla at all; _now_, that's a fact."

There was something so confident and emphatic in my comrade's manner
that, despite my well-grounded belief on that point, I felt a sinking at
the heart. The bare possibility that, after all our trouble and toil
and suffering in penetrating thus far towards the land which he is said
to inhabit, we should find that there really existed no such creatu