"
Those who have shot under such circumstances will readily
understand that everything depends upon "luck;" one man may beat
the forest assiduously and vainly for five or six weeks; another
will be successful on the first day. Thus whilst I, without any
fault of my own, utterly failed in shooting a gorilla, although I
saw him and heard him, and came upon his trail, and found his
mortal spoils, another traveller had hardly landed in the Gaboon
before he was so fortunate as to bring down a fine anthropoid.
However, as man cannot command success, I was obliged to content
myself with doing all in my power to deserve it. I offered five
dollars, equalling the same number of sovereigns in England, to
every huntsman for every fair shot, and ten dollars for each live
ape. I implicitly obeyed all words of command, and my factotum
Selim Agha was indefatigable in his zeal. Indeed "luck" was dead
against us during the whole of my stay in Gorilla-land. We ran a
fair risk of drowning in the first day's voyage; on the next
march we were knocked down by lightning, and on the last trip I
had a narrow escape from the fall of a giant branch that grazed
my hammock.
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