11. Kabale is quite a landmark in central Africa. It possesses a lightful English inn set among lawns and terraced gardens. There is a well-kept golf course just outside the grounds, and within the immediate neighhourhood of the hotel itself one can play tennis, badminton, croquet, bowls, table tennis and possibly squash as well (though I never verified this). In the evening one drinks French wine at dinner, reads the magazines in the lounge, plays bridge and listens to the radio. Very rightly the European inhabitants of East Africa take their holidays in this cool green place, for it bears a striking resemblance to any of the lusher golfing resorts in southern England, Sunningdale perhaps. It is not, however, the Africa that the traveller comes to see. Changing for dinner the night we arrived I remembered the gorillas. They lay only half a day's drive away through the mountains, and despite the heavy rain that had been falling the road, I discovered, was passable. Next morning we were on our way. It was not that we expected to see a gorilla any more than an amateur deep-sea fisherman will count on hooking a marlin or a sailfish at his first attempt; we were simply glad to be back in primitive Africa again and in an atmosphere where the unexpected might just possibly happen.
     12. We came over the crest of the mountains and followed the sweep of the eagles far down into the valley below, to the little village of Kisoro at the foot of Muhavura and its neighbouring cone, Mount Mgahinga. Here one stays with the game warden, Mr. M. W. Baumgartel, a man who, like Carl Akeley before him, devotes his life to the gorillas. Mr. Baumgartel was not unoptimistic. If we rose early on the following morning, he said, he would give us guides to take us up the mountains. It would mean climbing to at least ten thousand feet and we would be walking all day, without any definite prospect of success; the very best we could hope for was one fleeting glimpse of a gorilla through the undergrowth.