Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/259

 and massive in the middle ground, smouldering, too, but less demonstrative than her sister, Nyamlagira. Lying almost at the foot of Chaninagongo and to the south, glistened in the tropical sun the loveliest of African inland waters—Lake Kivu. Behind us, upward toward the summit of Karisimbi and adown the slopes in front, there stretched a primeval forest of marvellous beauty—in character unlike anything else I know—a veritable fairyland—and at our feet lay dead one of its great giants.

I realized that the search for a background and a setting for the gorilla group was ended. We will reproduce this scene on canvas as a background for the gorillas when they are mounted in the Museum. The foreground will be a reproduction of the old dead tree with its wealth of vegetation in the midst of which the old gorilla died. Of course, it is regrettable that we had no painter with us at the time. To get one there means another long journey from New York to Central Africa, yet it will be worth it if the thousands who visit the Museum get even a faint degree of the satisfaction from the setting of the group that we got from this view in the gorilla country.

I felt then, and even more so now, that that morning represented the high spot in my African experiences. In the midst of a forest, a land of beauty, we overlooked a scene incomparable, a scene of a world in the making, while our great primitive cousin, whose sanctuary we had invaded, lay dead at our feet. That was the sad note. To me the source of greatest joy was the fact that here, at the culmination of a