8 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE,

four inches shorter),. with immense body, huge chest, and
great muscular arms, with fiercely glaring, large, deep gray
eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me
like some nightmare vision: thus stood before us this king of
the African forest. He was not afraid of us. He stood
there and beat his breast with his huge fists till it resounded
like an immense bass-drum, which is the gorillas’ mode of
offering defiance; meantime giving vent to roar after roar.
The roar of the gorilla is the most singular and awful noise
heard in these African woods. It begins with a sharp dark,
like an angry dog, then glides into a deep bass roll, which
literally and closely zesembles the roll of distant thunder
along the sky. So deep is it that it seems to proceed
less from the mouth and throat than from the deep chest
and vast paunch. His eyes began to flash fiercer fire as
we stood motionless on the defensive, and the crest of short
hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly
up and down, while his powerful fangs were shown as he
again sent forth his thunderous roar. He advanced a few
steps—then stopped to utter that hideous roar again—
advanced again, and finally stopped when at a distance of
about six yards from us. And here, just as he began another
of his roars, beating his breast with rage, we fired, and
killed him, With a groan which had something terribly
human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward
on his face. The body shook convulsively for a few minutes,
the limbs moved about in a struggling way, and then all
was quiet: death had done its work, and I had leisure to
examine the huge body. It proved to be five feet eight
inches high, and the muscular development of the arms and
breast showed what immense strength it had possessed.” A
smaller gorilla, shot by M. du Chaillu on another occasion,
measured five feet six inches in height, fifty inches round
the chest, and his arms had a spread of seven feet two inches