“To run away was impossible. He would have been caught in the jungle before he had gone a dozen steps. He stood his ground, and as quickly as he could reloaded his gun. Just as he raised it to fire the gorilla dashed it out of his hands, the gun going off in the fall, and then in an instant, and with a terrible roar, the animal gave him a tremendous blow with its immense paw, frightfully lacerating the abdomen, and with this single blow laying bare part of the intestines. As he sank, bleeding, to the ground, the monster seized the gun, and the poor hunter thought he would have his brains dashed out with it. But the gorilla seemed to have looked upon this also as an enemy, and in his rage flattened the barrel between his strong jaws. “When we came upon the ground the gorilla was gone. This is their mode when attacked--to strike one or two blows, and then leave the victims of their rage on the ground and go off into the woods.” During his explorations in equatorial Africa, Du Chaillu discovered two new species of ape--_Troglodytes calvus_ and _T. Koola-Kamba_--and also a number of other mamalians, birds, serpents, and reptiles, before unknown to naturalists. Contrary to a somewhat prevalent belief, many diseases prevail among wild animals. “The free life of nature” is subject to woes, and needs the physician’s aid, after all. “I have seen,” says Dr. Livingstone, “the gnu, kama or hartebeest, the tressebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable even by the natives. Great numbers also of zebras are found dead with masses of foam at the nostrils, exactly as occurs in the common ‘horse-sickness.’ I once found a buffalo blind from ophthalmia standing by the fountain Otse. The rhinoceros has often worms on the conjunction of his eyes. All the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms besides. The zebra, giraffe, eland and kukuma have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their teeth as well as from disease. The carnivera, too, become diseased and mangy; lions become lean and perish miserably by reason of the decay of their teeth.” Cumming also speaks of seeing extensive plains thickly covered with the bones of wild animals which had died of disease. As a rule, however, the animals are healthy. Their variety and vast numbers are beyond calculation. In a single day, Cumming saw the fresh spoor of about twenty varieties of “large game” and most of the animals themselves. These included elephant, black and white rhinoceros, hippopotamus, camelopard, buffalo, blue wildebeest, zebra, water-buck, sassayby, koodoo, pallah, springbok, serolomootlooque, wild boar, duiker, steinbok, lion, leopard. This is the _habitat_ also of keilton, eland, oryx, roan antelope, sable antelope, hartebeest, klipspringer, grys steinbuck, and reitbuck. A little farther on he thus speaks of the game he saw while taking breakfast: