ONE morning in the spring of the present year I, the editor, or rather
the reporter, of the following lecture, found myself in a forest of
Western Africa. I was neither searching for the source of anything nor
hoping to meet anybody. But, as I walked on my lonely way, I did soon
come upon a man, much be-tattered and bronzed, who was plainly an
Anglo-Saxon. He was bathing his feet in a muddy little spring, from
which a tiny rill ran out and lost itself in the leafy gloom. As I
passed him I turned my head inquiringly, and he looked up and said,
“Yes, my name is Livingstone, and this is it. It empties into a
duck-pond about a mile off, and that empties into a series of
mill-ponds, each a little larger than the other, from the last of which
a river runs into Lake Nyanza. This is it; and so I thought that, as I
am rather tired with my tramp, I would bathe my feet. Throw a chip in
here, and it will float past Thebes and the Pyramids into the
Mediterranean. Just send word to Murchison, please, that I’ll be along
presently. Good morning.” “All right,” I answered; “good morning,” and
continued my walk, thinking how nice and jolly it was to find
Livingstone making a wash-pot of the source of the Nile.
As I went onward, musing upon the eternal fitness of things, an endless
theme, I became aware that there were many monkeys around me, of various
kinds, but chiefly gorillas. They were all in motion, not disporting
themselves or seeking food, but apparently moving forward, with one
consent, in one direction. Some of them were leaping from tree to tree;
others ran along upon the ground. As I went on the numbers increased,
until at last I found myself surrounded by several hundred gorillas,
many of them being the largest and fiercest of their species. There
could not have been more if Mr. Du Chaillu had been present. Determined
to see what was the occasion of this movement, I followed his example
and joined the crowd. After walking for about an hour, the throng
increasing at every step, we finally came upon an open place in the
forest, and there we found a mass-meeting of monkeys. Some were seated
upon the ground; others were perched upon the branches of the
surrounding trees; and all seemed animated and expectant. There was a
great chattering, which, in the confusion, I did not at first quite
understand; although, having read Mr. Du Chaillu’s books in a docile
mood, I was familiar with the monkey language, and particularly with the
gorilla dialect. But I soon made out the words “Fall of man,”
“interesting subject,” “lecture,” “Darwin,” “the learned Um Bugg Hee.” I
inferred at once that there was to be a lecture on the monkey version of
the Darwinian theory; and of course decided to wait, and bathe my feet
also in the sources of the Nile. After the ladies had been escorted to
front places (for, as Mr. Du Chaillu has told us, the gorillas are very
attentive to their females), there was silence; and the lecturer, a
large and solemn male gorilla, somewhat past middle age, mounted a
stump, and delivered himself as follows. I have done nothing more than
translate his lecture from Gorillese into a civilized form of thought
and into the English idiom.
I will only call attention to the reserve and decorum of the gorilla
lecture. Notwithstanding the nature of his subject, and the example of
his illustrious predecessor and kinsman, he has made his amorous scenes
few, and has treated them with great delicacy, and, unlike the former,
has not made it necessary to cloak any part of his lecture in the
obscurity of a learned language:—a doubtful expedient in these
days—these practical days—when so many young women learn nothing of
house-keeping but much of Latin.
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