Читать книгу In Brightest Africa онлайн

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Truthfulness is the high note of the enduring biographer of animal life as well as of human life. "Set down naught in malice, nothing extenuate" is an essential principle in the portrayal of vanishing Africa as it is in our portrayal of the contemporary manners and customs of modern society; to know the elephant, the lion, the antelope, the gorilla as they really are, not as they have been pictured by sensational writers who have never seen them at close range or who have been tempted to exaggerate their danger for commercial reasons. Akeley's work on the gorilla is the latest and perhaps his best portrayal of animal life in Africa as it really is. He defends the reputation of this animal, which has been misrepresented in narrative and fiction as a ferocious biped that attacks man at every opportunity, abducts native women as in the sculptures of Fremiet, a monster with all the vices of man and none of the virtues. For this untruthful picture Akeley substitutes a real gorilla, chiefly a quadruped in locomotion, not seeking combat with man, ferocious only when his family rights are invaded, benign rather than malignant in countenance. Thus he explodes the age-long gorilla myth and we learn for the first time the place in nature of this great anthropoid and come to believe that it should be conserved and protected rather than eliminated. In other words, the author shows that there are good grounds for the international movement to conserve the few remaining tribes of the gorilla.