I believe, the four-year-old son of the old female. He apparently caught on somewhere, for a half hour later when we were trying to find a way down we came across him and, as he ran about, one of the guides speared him. I came up before he was dead. There was a heartbreaking expression of piteous pleading on his face. He would have come to my arms for comfort.
About this time the chasm filled with a fog so dense that we could not move with safety. Another half hour and the fog was cleared by a heavy cold rain and hail and we continued to search for a way down to the dead gorilla. The Negroes had worked earnestly, but they gave up and said it could not be done. Poor devils, they were stark naked in that icy rain; God knows how they lived through it. When they gave up they gave up for good apparently, stood shaking with cold, making no effort to find shelter from the rain. I took off my Burberry raincoat and got seven of them under it with me.
In such proximity to seven naked natives almost all of my senses were considerably oppressed and I was grateful when the rain lessened so that I might put them at a more respectful as well as a more comfortable distance. The others had huddled under an old tree root. All came out and we looked over the situation. We were on the side of a ridge of Mikeno. Where we were there was vegetation and a fair foothold. Below and above us were stretches of sheer rock. Not far from us a little stream fell off the shelf where we were, in a clear fall of 200 feet.
