e sallied forth after the manner of American Indians,
in single file, keeping, as may well be supposed, a sharp lookout as we
went along. The fact was that long delay, frequent disappointment, and
now the near prospect of success, conspired together to fill us with a
species of nervous excitement that caused us to start at every sound.

The woods here were pretty thick, but they varied in their character so
frequently that we were at one time pushing slowly among dense, almost
impenetrable underwood, at another walking briskly over small plains
which were covered in many places with large boulders. It was
altogether a gloomy, savage-looking country, and seemed to me well
suited to be the home of so dreadful an animal. There were few animals
to be seen here. Even birds were scarce, and a few chattering monkeys
were almost the only creatures that broke the monotonous silence and
solitude around us.

"What a dismal place!" said Peterkin, in a low tone. "I feel as if we
had got to the fag-end of the world, as if we were about plunging into
ancient chaos."

"It is, indeed," I replied, "a most dreary region. I think that the
gorillas will not be disturbed by many hunters with white faces."

"There's no saying," interposed Jack. "I should not wonder, now, if
you, Ralph, were to go home and write a book detailing our adventures in
these parts, that at least half the sportsmen of England would be in
Africa next year, and the race of gorillas would probably become
extinct."

"If the sportsmen don't come out until I write a book about them, I fear
the gorillas will remain undisturbed for all time to come."

At that time, reader, I was not aware of the extreme difficulty that
travellers experience in resisting the urgent entreaties of admiring and
too partial friends!

Presently we came to a part of the forest where the underwood became so
dense that we could scarcely make our way through it at all, and here we
began for the first time to have some clearer conception of the immense
power of the creature we were in pursuit of; for in order to clear its
way it had torn down great branches of the trees, and in one or two
places had seized young trees as thick as a man's arm, and snapped them
in two as one would snap a walking-cane.

Following the track with the utmost care for several miles, we at length
came to a place where several huge rocks lay among the trees. Here,
while we were walking along in silence, Makaroo