The Faber Book of Science (49 page)

Rakata, along with Panjang and Sertung, and other islands of the Krakatau archipelago blasted and pumice-coated by the 1883 explosion, have within the span of a century rewoven a semblance of
the communities that existed before, and the diversity of life has largely returned. The question remains as to whether endemic species, those found only on the archipelago prior to 1883, were destroyed by the explosion. We can never be sure because the islands were too poorly explored by naturalists before Krakatau came so dramatically to the world’s attention in 1883. It seems unlikely that endemic species ever existed. The islands are so small that the natural turnover of species may have been too fast to allow evolution to attain the creation of new species, even without volcanic episodes.

In fact the archipelago has suffered turbulence that destroyed or at least badly damaged its fauna and flora every few centuries. According to Javanese legend, the volcano Kapi erupted violently in the Sunda Strait in 416
AD
: ‘At last the mountain Kapi with a tremendous roar burst into pieces and sunk into the deepest of the earth. The water of the sea rose and inundated the land.’ A series of smaller eruptions, burning at least part of the forest, occurred during 1680 and 1681.

Today you can sail close by the islands without guessing their violent history, unless Anak Krakatau happens to be smoldering that day. The thick green forest offers testimony to the ingenuity and resilience of life. Ordinary volcanic eruptions are not enough, then, to break the crucible of life.

It is an exhilarating experience to wander alone through unknown forests when everything is still new and mysterious. The senses sharpen, bringing into quick focus all that is seen and heard. I knew that there were leopards on these slopes, and the trails of the black buffalo crisscrossed the area. Both animals have the reputation of being unpredictable, and I was watchful. Each creature has its own distance at which it will take flight from an intruder, and each will allow itself to be approached only so far before defending itself. It behoves man to learn the responses of each species; until he has done so, and is familiar with the sights, sounds, and smells around him, there is an element of danger. Even so, danger that is understood does not detract from but rather enhances the pleasures of tracking.

The first signs of gorillas I came across were three nests on the ground. Branches from the undergrowth had been pulled toward the center creating crude platforms on which the animals had slept for the
night. But the broken vegetation was wilted and the dung at the edge of the nests was covered with small red fungi, indicating that the site was old. I was heartened by my find, and, after examining the nests, I pushed on. Neither Doc [Dr J. T. Emlen, Professor of Zoology, University of Wisconsin] nor I had much luck that day. We found nothing but old sites.

The following morning, Rousseau wanted to check the Rukumi rest house, which lies another thousand feet higher, on the slopes of Mt Karisimbi. We joined him, and I took my sleeping bag in the event that I decided to remain there for the night. For an hour we climbed upward through the
Hagenia
woodland. Then these trees grew sparser and were replaced by
Hypericum
lanceolatum‚
a bushy tree with small, lanceolate leaves and striking yellow blossoms. Abruptly the terrain flattened, the forest ceased, and we stood at the edge of a huge meadow with the summit cone of Mt Karisimbi towering three thousand feet above us. The dark branches and trunks of the trees growing here and there in the meadow were in vivid contrast to the yellow of the grass. The small bell-shaped flowers on the branches of these trees I recognized as heather – not the small shrub most of us know but a heather tree over thirty feet high. Among the heather grew wild blackberries, large and delicious, on which we feasted until our fingers and mouths were purple-stained. The rest house stood against the base of the mountain with a magnificent view across the meadow, past the black silhouettes of the heather to the bleak summit of Mt Mikeno.

The slopes of Mt Karisimbi beckoned, and I knew that I must climb the peak. Doc came a short distance to examine the most unusual forest we had ever seen. Tree groundsels or giant senecios, weird and gnarled plants with an other-worldly look, were scattered over the open slopes to an altitude of 13,500 feet. In the temperate zones of the world, senecios are insignificant weeds, but here in the cold and humid mountains they are giants over twenty feet high, with thick stems and flowering heads a foot or more long. The large ovate leaves are clustered at the apex of the branches and they glisten as if polished. The only other tall plants in this curious forest were giant lobelias, consisting of a single stem, a cluster of narrow leaves, and pointing skyward like a candle a long flowering head covered with tiny purplish blossoms.

For the next two days we continued our search for gorillas. We
found some fresh feeding sites, and Doc once thought he heard a gorilla in the distance. On the third day, far down along the Kanyamagufa Canyon, I heard a sound that electrified me – a rapid
pok-pok-pok,
the sound of a gorilla pounding its chest. I followed the edge of the canyon until I found a game trail that crossed it. Carefully I scouted along the slope where I expected the animal to be. But I had no luck. Only later did I learn that there is an almost ventriloqual quality in the sound of chest-beating that makes distance very difficult to judge.

When Doc and I returned to the canyon in the morning, we were greeted by the same noise. Evidently a gorilla had spotted us. I climbed into the crown of a tree to look over the shrubs that obscured our view, and Doc circled up the slope. Suddenly, as he told me later, the undergrowth swayed forty feet ahead, and Doc heard the soft grumbling sound of contented animals. Unaware of him, the gorillas approached to within thirty feet. Two black, shaggy heads peered for ten seconds from the vegetation. Uncertain of how to react, Doc raised his arms. The animals screamed and walked away. We both examined the swath of freshly trampled vegetation and the torn remnants of wild celery and nettles on which the gorillas had been feeding. While Doc took notes on the spoor, I followed the trail. The musty, somewhat sweet odor of gorilla hung in the air. Somewhere ahead and out of sight, a gorilla roared and roared again,
uuua-uuua!
an explosive, half-screaming sound that shattered the stillness of the forest and made the hairs on my neck rise. I took a few steps and stopped, listened, and moved again. The only sound was the buzzing of insects. Far below me white clouds crept up the slopes and fingered into the canyons. Then another roar, but farther away. I continued over a ridge, down, and up again. Finally I saw them, on the opposite slope about two hundred feet away, some sitting on the ground, others in trees.

An adult male, easily recognizable by his huge size and gray back, sat among the herbs and vines. He watched me intently and then roared. Beside him sat a juvenile, perhaps four years old. Three females, fat and placid, with sagging breasts and long nipples, squatted near the male, and up in the fork of a tree crouched a female with a small infant clinging to the hair on her shoulders. A few other animals moved around in the dense vegetation. Accustomed to the drab gorillas in zoos, with their pelage lusterless and scuffed by the cement
floors of their cages, I was little prepared for the beauty of the beasts before me. Their hair was not merely black, but a shining blue-black, and their black faces shone as if polished.

We sat watching each other. The large male, more than the others, held my attention. He rose repeatedly on his short, bowed legs to his full height, about six feet, whipped his arms to beat a rapid tattoo on his bare chest, and sat down again. He was the most magnificent animal I had ever seen. His brow ridges overhung his eyes, and the crest on his crown resembled a hair miter; his mouth when he roared was cavernous, and the large canine teeth were covered with black tartar. He lay on the slope, propped on his huge shaggy arms, and the muscles of his broad shoulders and silver back rippled. He gave an impression of dignity and restrained power, of absolute certainty in his majestic appearance. I felt a desire to communicate with him, to let him know by some small gesture that I intended no harm, that I wished only to be near him. Never before had I had this feeling on meeting an animal. As we watched each other across the valley, I wondered if he recognized the kinship that bound us.

After a while the roars of the male became less frequent, and the other members of the group scattered slowly. Some climbed
ponderously
into shrubby trees and fed on the vines that draped from the branches; others reclined on the ground, either on the back or on the side, lazily reaching out every so often to pluck a leaf. They still kept their eyes on me, but I was amazed at their lack of excitement.

‘George,’ called Doc. ‘George!’

At the sound all the gorillas rose and disappeared silently at a fast walk. Doc had become concerned for my safety after first hearing the many roars and finally the prolonged silence. We ate our lunch – crackers, cheese, and chocolate – before we checked the site where I had watched them. Their trail angled upward across a valley and up another ridge, where we found the group again two hours later. A female sat on a mound, her infant beside her. The male, ever alert, roared when he spotted us and stalked back and forth in the usual posture of gorillas – feet flat on the ground and the upper part of the body supported on the knuckles of the hands. When he approached the female on the mound, she moved rapidly to one side, and he claimed her place. As before, the group settled down and seemingly paid us scant attention. The male, who must have weighed over four hundred pounds, rested on the mound looking over the mountains and
the plains, truly the master of his domain. A female holding an infant gently to her chest walked to his side.

‘It must have been just born,’ I whispered to Doc. ‘It’s still wet.’ And he nodded in agreement.

The female leaned heavily against the side of the male. Her hairy arm almost obscured her spidery offspring, whose hairless arms and legs waved about in unoriented fashion. The male leaned over and with one hand fondled the infant. For two hours, enthralled, we watched this family scene. But the way home was long, and reluctantly we left the animals, but not before we spotted another gorilla far uphill and barely visible. Was it another group or a single animal? With buoyant steps we moved down the slope. We only hoped that in our presence the gorillas would always be as tranquil as today. Perhaps, we feared, they had merely been loath to move because of the imminent or recent birth of the infant.

But something else took our minds off the apes. Just ahead and close to the trail that crossed the Kanyamagufa Canyon an elephant wheezed, and then another. We stopped and strained our eyes, trying to locate the gray forms gliding softly through the bamboo and the brush around us. It was my first close contact with elephants, and I was nervous. I clambered up a tree with much noise as the dry branches snapped under my weight. It was embarrassing, for after all my scrambling I was still no higher than the elephant’s back. Doc motioned me to come down, and we hurried in and out of the canyon, hoping that no one would bar our way.

On the following morning we returned to the ridge where we had seen the gorillas. The animals had descended into the valley and were now feeding leisurely. It struck us immediately that there were now more gorillas than yesterday. We counted, recounted, and agreed there were twenty-two: four adult or silver-backed males, one young or black-backed male, eight females, three juveniles, five infants, and one medium-sized gorilla of whose sex we were uncertain. Did two separate groups join, or had we seen only part of the group the day before? The big males roared and slapped their chests, but, as on the previous day, they seemed little concerned as they rested beneath the canopy of trees. As we watched, most of them lay down and went to sleep. One female sat with a large infant in her arms. Another small, woolly infant left its mother and bumbled over to the first female. Briefly she cuddled both youngsters to her chest. A male rose, casually
ambled by a sitting female, suddenly grabbed her by the leg, yanked her two or three feet down the slope, then cantered off. It was a wonderful feeling to sit near these animals and to record their actions as no one had ever done before. We had the chance to observe significant and characteristic incidents, but we knew that to explain what we were seeing – and even to predict what might occur in a particular circumstance – would take many, many hours of
observation
.

After resting for some three hours, the animals spread over the hillside to feed. An infant ran along, put some leaves into its mouth, and spat them out. A juvenile, perhaps three or four years old, held to the end of a three-foot log with both hands. It bit off the rotten bark and appeared to lick a whitish fluid from the wood. Another juvenile came up and, having wiped the log with one finger, licked it. Soon all the gorillas were actively moving across the slope, feeding as they went. Their movements were restrained and rather phlegmatic; only the youngsters behaved in exuberant fashion. One infant dashed along, pounced on the back of another infant, and both disappeared rolling over and over into the undergrowth. After five hours with the gorillas we returned home.

A guard and I tried to find the group again the following day, but we had no luck. I realized how much I had to learn about the ways of the forest and about tracking animals over long distances. The park had no teachers, for the local bantus were all agriculturalists; they avoided the forest and the wild animals and evil spirits it contained. I knew that before I could study gorillas successfully I would have to teach myself to recognize the age of spoor, the number of animals involved, and the direction they had taken. The forest was vast, the animals few, and I could not depend on luck in finding gorillas as we had done so far.

Luck, however, was still with us, for on the way home, at a place where the Kanyamagufa Canyon veers sharply toward the upper slopes of Mt Mikeno, we came across a fresh trail. Early the following morning, when Doc and I had barely proceeded three hundred feet along this trail, the brush crackled ahead. A black arm reached from the undergrowth, pulled a strand of vine from a branch, and disappeared from view. We stepped behind the bole of a tree and peered at the feeding gorillas about one hundred feet away. Without warning, a female with infant walked toward our tree, a large male behind her. I nudged Doc and quietly climbed up on a branch without
being seen by the animals. The female stopped some thirty feet from us and sat quietly with her large infant beside her. Once the infant glanced up at me, then stared intently for fifteen seconds without giving the alarm. But when the female inadvertently looked in my direction, her relaxed gaze hardened as she saw me. She grabbed her young with one arm, pulling it to her, and with the same motion rushed away, emitting a high-pitched scream. The male answered with a roar and looked around, and Doc, having failed to interpret the purpose of my nudge, was surprised to see me in the branches above him. The members of the group assembled around the male after a moment of tense alertness. The animals were still within about one hundred feet of us, and we wondered what would happen. To our relief, one face after another turned toward us in a quiet, quizzical stare as curiosity replaced alarm. They craned their necks, and two juveniles climbed into the surrounding trees to obtain a better view. One juvenile with a mischievous look on its face beat its chest, then quickly ducked into the vegetation, only to peer furtively through the screen of weeds as if to judge the effect of its commotion. Slowly the animals dispersed and went about their daily routine. I particularly remember one female who left the deep shade and settled herself at the base of a tree in a shaft of sunlight. She stretched her short legs in front of her and dangled her arms loosely at her sides. Her face was old and kind and creased by many wrinkles. She seemed utterly at peace and relaxed as she basked in the morning sun.