4. Yet the fact is we know very little about gorillas. No really satisfactory photograph has ever been taken of one in a wild state, no zoologist, however intrepid, has been able to keep the animal under close and constant observation in the dark jungles in which it lives. Carl Akeley, the American naturalist, led two expeditions to these volcanoes in the nineteen-twenties, and now lies buried here among the animals he loved so well. But even he was unable to discover how long the gorilla lives, or how or why it dies, nor was he able to define the exact social pattern of the family groups, or indicate the final extent of their intelligence. All this and many other things remain almost as much a mystery as they were when the French explorer Du Chaillu first described the animal to the civilized world a century ago. The Abominable Snowman who haunts the imagination of climbers in the Himalayas is hardly more elusive.
    4)然而事实是我们对大猩猩了解极少。从来没有照到过一张真正令人满意的大猩猩在野生状态下的相片；没有一个动物学家，无论他有多么坚韧不拔的精神，能在大猩猩生活的阴暗的莽林中严密地、不间断地对它进行观察。美国动物观察学家卡尔·埃克利在本世纪20年代曾率领两支考察队来到这一火山地区。现在他就埋葬在他十分热爱的动物中间。但是，即使是他也未能发现大猩猩能活多久，或者它们怎样死去，死亡原因又是什么。他也没有能够确切地描述它们家族群中的社会职能，或指出它们智力的最高程度。这一切以及许多别的方面至今几乎依然和一个世纪前法国探险家杜·沙鲁首次向文明世界描写大猩猩时一样神秘。萦绕于喜马拉雅山攀登者的想像中的雪人也不比它更难以捉摸。

    5. The little that is known about gorillas certainly makes you want to know a great deal more. Sir Julian Huxley has recorded that thrice in the London Zoo he saw an eighteen-month-old specimen trace the outline of its own shadow with its finger. "No similar artistic initiative," he writes, "has been recorded for any other anthropoid, though we all know now that young chimpanzees will paint 'pictures' if provided with the necessary materials." Huxley speaks too of a traveller seeing a male gorilla help a female up a steep rock-step on Mount Muhavura, and gallantry of that kind is certainly not normal among animals. It is this" human-ness" of the gorilla which is so beguiling. According to some observers he courts and makes love in the same way that humans do. Once the family is established it clings together. It feeds in a group in the thick bamboo jungles on the mountainside in the daytime, each animal making a tidy pile of its food -- wild celery, bamboo shoots and other leaves -- and squatting down to eat it; and by night each member of the family makes its own bed by bending over and interlacing the bamboo fronds so as to form a kind of oval-shaped nest which is as comfortable and springy as a mattress. The father tends to make his bed just a foot or two from the ground, the mother a little higher, and the children (perhaps two or three of them) safely lodged in the branches up above.
    5)对大猩猩已有的那一点点了解肯定会使你想更多地了解它。朱利安·赫胥黎爵士记载说，他在伦敦动物园中3次看到一只18个月的大猩猩用手指沿着自己的影子勾画轮廓，他写道：“还没有记载过有任何别的类人猿有类似的艺术上的创造性，虽然我们现在都知道如果给他们提供必要的物品，年轻的黑猩猩会画‘图画”’。赫胥黎还谈到一位旅行家在穆哈务拉山看到一只雄性大猩猩帮助一只雌性大猩猩上一个很陡的岩石阶，而这种对异性的殷勤在动物中肯定是少有的。正是大猩猩的这种“人的特性”使人感到如此有趣。据一些观察者说，大猩猩求爰交媾的方式和人一样，一旦建立起了家庭便依附在一起。他们在白昼时成群在山坡上茂密的竹林中觅食。每只大猩猩把自己的食物整齐地堆成一堆——野芹菜、竹笋及其它叶子——蹲下来吃，晚上家庭每个成员各自准备床铺，它们把竹子的枝叶弯曲交织在一起做成一种椭圆形的窝，和床垫一样舒服而有弹性。父亲往往把床做在离地只有一两英尺的地方，母亲的稍高一点，幼猩猩(或许有两三只)则安全地睡在高处的树枝上。