Sometimes, the natives assert, when a company of villagers are moving rapidly through the shades of the forest, they become aware of the presence of the formidable Ape by the sudden disappearance of one of their companions, who is hoisted up into a tree, uttering, perhaps, only a short choking sob. In a few minutes he falls to the ground a strangled corpse, for the animal, watching his opportunity, has let down his huge hind-hand and seized the passing negro by the neck with a vice-like grip, and has drawn him up into the branches, dropping him when life and struggling have ceased. [Illustration: FEMALE GORILLA AND YOUNG. (From the _Transactions of the Zoological Society of London_.)] The missionaries, when they were established in the Gaboon region, found that all along the coast the Gorillas were believed by the natives to be human beings, members of their own race degenerated. Some natives who had been a little civilised, and who thought a little more than the rest, did not acknowledge this relationship, but considered them as embodied spirits, the belief in the transmigration of souls being prevalent. They said that the _enche-eko_, or Chimpanzee, has the spirit of a _coastman_, being less fierce and more intelligent than the _enge-ena_, or Gorilla, which has that of a _bushman_. The majority, however, fully believed them to be men, and seemed to be unaffected by the arguments offered to disprove this fancy; and this was especially true of the tribes in the immediate vicinity of the locality. They believed them to be literally wild men of the woods. Nevertheless, they were eaten when they could be got, and their flesh, with that of the Chimpanzee and other Monkeys, formed and still forms a prominent place in the bill of fare. Impressed thus with a belief in their kinship and of their ferocity, it was not surprising that live Gorillas could not be obtained by European travellers. Even a bold and skilful hunter of the elephant, when pressed to bring in one, declared he would not do it for a mountain of gold.