Sometimes after long months of absence I see them again. They always recognize me at sight and often scream with pleasure at my return. CHAPTER VIII Caged in an African Jungle--The Cage and its Contents--Its Location--Its Purpose--The Jungle--The Great Forest--Its Grandeur--Its Silence It will be of interest to the reader to know the manner in which I have pursued the study of monkeys in a state of nature, and the means employed to that end. I, therefore, give a brief outline of my life in a cage in the heart of the African jungle, where I went in order to watch the denizens of the forest when free from all restraint. Having for several years devoted much time to the study of the speech and the habits of monkeys in captivity, I formulated a plan of going to their native haunts to study them under more favorable conditions. In the course of my labors up to that time, I had found that monkeys of the highest physical types have also higher types of speech than those of the inferior kinds. In accordance with this fact, it was logical to infer that in the anthropoid apes--they being next to man in the scale of nature--would be found the faculty of speech developed in a higher degree than in the monkeys. The chief object of my study was to learn the language of animals. The great apes appeared to be the best subjects for that purpose, so I turned my attention to them. The gorilla was said to be the most nearly like man, and the chimpanzee next. There were none of the former in captivity, and but few of the latter; and those few were kept under conditions that forbade all efforts to do anything in the line of scientific study of their speech. As the gorilla and the chimpanzee could both be found in the same section of tropical Africa, that region was selected as the best field of operation; and, in order to carry out the task assumed, I prepared for a journey thither. [Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE AT GLASS GABOON (From a Photograph.)] The locality chosen was along the equator and about two degrees south of it. This region is infested with fevers, insects, serpents, and wild beasts of divers kinds. To ignore such dangers would be folly; but there was no way to see these apes in their freedom, except to go and live among them. To lessen in a degree the dangers incurred by such an adventure, I devised a cage of steel wire woven into a lattice with a mesh one inch and a half wide. This was made in twenty-four panels, each three feet and three inches square, set in frames of narrow iron strips. Each side of the panels was provided with lugs or half hinges, so arranged as to fit any side of any other panel. These could be quickly bolted together with small iron rods, and when so joined they formed a cage of cubical shape, six feet and six inches square. Any one or more of the panels could be used as a door. The whole structure was painted a dingy green, so that when erected in the forest it was almost invisible in the foliage.