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 CHAPTER XII

ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO

The day after I shot my first gorilla on the slopes of Mikeno I spent in camp. I should have preferred to spend it resting, for the day before had been a strenuous one, especially for a man suffering from blood poisoning, as I was. I had had it for some time and had lost about twenty pounds during the preceding three weeks. This left me in a weakened condition and a rest would have been welcome. Had I been hunting merely to kill I should have laid off a day. But science is a jealous mistress and takes little account of a man's feelings. I had skinned the old gorilla roughly in the field the day before. If I wanted properly to preserve the specimen, there was no time to be lost. I set the Negroes at work cleaning the skeleton, keeping an eye on them as I worked at other things to see that they did not lose any of the bones. I had personally to take care of the feet, hands, and head. This latter I set up and photographed. Then I made a death mask of the face. The brains and internal organs I had to preserve in formalin. The whole business was a full hard day's work. One of the chief difficulties with scientific collecting is the necessity for doing all the skinning, cleaning, measuring, and preserving at once.