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CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GREAT APE OF EQUATORIAL AFRICA.

Battel, Monboddo, Bowdich, Savage, Wilson, and Du Chaillu.-Examination of their Testimony.-Description of the Ape's Habits.

ANDREW BATTEL, of Leigh, in Essex, was taken prisoner by some Indians near Rio Janeiro in 1582, and the Portuguese, having detained him a prisoner four months at Rio Janeiro, sent him to St. Paul's de Loanda. He was imprisoned in a fortress on the Coanza, and then sent to the Congo in a pinnace, to trade for "elephant's teeth, wheate, and oyle of the palme-tree." From there he was sent on to Longo (Loango), where he bought ivory at three tusks for a yard of cloth, with a large quantity of grass cloth and elephant's tails. After relating his remarkable adventures during the eighteen years which he spent in Angola, he describes the Congo and Angola kingdoms, their natives, and their natural productions. And it is from him that we receive our first account of the gorilla, to which the old Italian and Portuguese writers have but obscurely referred.

In quoting at length this authority and others, I am aware that I only follow in the footsteps of other writers on the subject, especially the author of Man's Place in Nature, who has shown himself no less industrious as an antiquarian than illustrious as an anatomist. But, as this question of the gorilla's habits remains one of controversy and of doubt, I think that I had better sum up all the evidence afforded by other travelers before I add to it my

own.

In describing the province of Mayumba, which is a few journeys south of the Fernand Vaz, Battel says, "Here is a great river called Banna; in the winter it hath no barre, because the generall winds cause a great sea. But when the sunne hath his south declination, then a boat may goe in, for then it is smooth because of the raine. This river is very great, and hath many fine islands, and people dwelling in them. The woods are so covered with baboones, monkies, apes, and parrots, that it will feare any man to

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travaile in them alone. Here are also two kinds of monsters which are common in these woods and very dangerous.

"The greatest of these two monsters is called Pongo in their language, and the lesser is called Encêgo. The pongo is in all proportions like a man, but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long hair upon his browes. His face and eares are without haire, and his hands also. His bodie is full of haire, but not very thicke, and it is of a dunnish colour. He differeth not from a man but in his legs, for they have no calfe. Hee goeth always upon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped on the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the ground. They sleep in the trees, and build shelters for the raine. They feed upon fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eate no kind of flesh. They can not speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. The people of the countrie when they travaile in the woods make fires where they sleepe in the night, and in the morning, when they are gone, the pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out, for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. They goe many together, and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. Many times they fall upon the elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beate them with their clubbed fists that they will runne roaring away from them. Those pongoes are never taken alive, because they are so strong that ten men can not hold one of them; but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrowes. The young pongo hangeth on his mother's bellie, with his hands fast clasped about her, so that when the countrie people kill any of the females they take the young one, which hangeth fast upon his mother. When they die among themselves, they cover the dead with great heapes of boughs and wood which is commonly found in their forests."

In Purchas's marginal note he adds: "He told me, in conference with him, that one of these pongoes tooke a negro of his which lived a month with them. For they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them, which he avoyded. He said their highth was like a man's, but their bignesse twice as great. I saw the negro boy. Their strength. What the other monster should be he hath forgotten to relate; and these papers came to my hand since his death, which, otherwise, in my often conferences, I might have learned."

This Banna River is probably the Fernand Vaz, the bar of

which is rendered impassable for a large boat by the winds, which blow continuously from the southwest during the winter or dry season. The gorilla, however, is not known by the name of pongo among any of the Camma tribes. It is the name of the country derived from that of its people. The Pongo country extends from the Gaboon to the Fernand Vaz. But the name of the other monster encégo is correct enough. It is the chimpanzee, which is still called nchigo throughout Equatorial Africa, afterward corrupted into Jocko by Buffon.

The chimpanzee, as far as we know at present, is distributed. over a larger area than the gorilla, being common not only in Equatorial Africa, but in the mountains of Sierra Leone. A young chimpanzee was brought from Angola in the earlier half of the 17th century, presented to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, anatomized by Tulpius and Tyson, described by Dapper, and borrowed only the other day by Professor Huxley from the Cheltenham Museum.

I was surprised to find in Lord Monboddo's "Origin and Progress of Language” (vol. i., p. 281) a most important passage, which has escaped the notice of critics throughout this long controversy. It is a letter written by a merchant of Bristol, who had been captain of a trader on the West Coast of Africa, and procured for Lord Monboddo by Mr. Bell, who had been governor of Cape Coast Castle. It is very remarkable as mentioning the three species of manlike apes in Western Africa.

"Of this animal there are three classes or species: the first and largest is, by the natives of Loango, Malemba, Calenda, and Congo, called or named impungu. This wonderful and frightful production of nature walks upright like man, is from 7 to 9 feet high when at maturity, thick in proportion, and amazingly strong; covered with longish hair, jet black over the body, but longer over the head; the face more like the human than the chimpenza, but the complexion black, and has no tail. When this animal sees a negroe it mostly pursues and catches them; it sometimes kills them, and sometimes takes them by the hand and leads them along with him. Some that have made their escape say that this animal, when it goes to sleep, does not lie down, but leans against a tree. In this position, when the prisoner finds it asleep, he steals away the hand or arm softly from his, and so steals away quietly-sometimes discovered and retaken. It lives on the fruits and roots of the country, at the expense chiefly of the labor of the

natives; and when it happened to be where there is no water, there is a tree with a juicy bark, which it strikes with its hand, bruises, and sucks the juice; and some of this tree it often carries with it when it travels, in case it should not find it or water by the way. And, indeed, I have heard them say that it can throw down a palm-tree by its amazing strength to come at the wine.* I never saw this animal; but there was a young one brought down from the inland country to the King of Malemba, which is next to Cabenda, while my son was there. The people that brought it down said it was quiet and composed the several months they had it, eating, and taking its victuals and drink quietly. It was brought down with a yoke about its neck, and its hands tied like the other slaves that came with it, and came down quietly. But when it came to the king's town, such amazing crowds came to see it from all quarters, it grew sullen and sulky; for, being so exposed, it would eat no victuals, and died in four or five days. It was young, about six feet and a half high. I have never seen this animal, nor my son; but he, in his last voyage, saw the hand of one of them, cut off about four inches above the joint of the wrist. It was dried and withered, yet in that state its fingers were as big as three of his, or bigger than his wrist—rather longer than the proportion of ours; and the part, when cut off in that wrinkled state, bigger than the biggest part of his arm; the upper part of the fingers, and all the other parts, covered with black hair; the under part like the hand of a negroe. It is said to be the strongest of all the beasts in the wood; and all are afraid of it. I have not heard of this animal any where but on the coast of Angola.

"The chimpenza, as the natives call it, the third and smallest class of this species, resembles the other in shape, only smaller, and walks oftener on all-fours than upright. We scarce know when this animal comes to a state of maturity, or the common period or length of its life. I am informed the females have their times like women. I had one on board, of the male sex, but it was very young. My son had a she one aboard his ship last voyage. The natives that brought it down said that it was three years old; but there was no appearance of the menses in the time he had it on board, which was three or four months. It is said

The Jagas are the only tribe who cut down the palm-trees in order to tap them. Their usual method is to ascend the tree by means of a hoop, tap it, and hang a calabash for the sap to run into.

of this animal that they associate in communities, and build little towns or villages; that when their houses are finished they immediately leave them, and go to building more, never choosing to sleep but as few nights as possible in one place. They have their games and pastimes like the natives; and it is said that they have a king, who does not work himself, but orders. This animal, when taken young and used to the natives in their dwellings, does not like to stir out of doors after dark; nor can they force it. One, at Serraleon, in my time, when the women used to go out to gather sticks, went with them and gathered its bundle; and when they went for water, carried its pitcher or jar, and brought it home full with the rest. It is covered with a longish hair, jet black, the hair on the head longest, and shaded in the middle to each side; the complexion of the face rather darker than the mulattoe; the face flattish; a large, wide mouth, almost from ear to ear; small flattish nose, longish chin, eyebrows and forehead like ours, and good regular teeth like ours: makes comical grimaces with its face, and in its face is most like to the ugliest mulattoe woman you ever saw, but uglier. Its face can not help exciting laughter; and I have heard the natives say, if they are laughed at and made game of, they certainly took it to heart and died. My answer to him was, if that was the case they must die, for it was impossible to look at them without laughing. This animal I have only seen at Serraleon and the coast of Angola, never on the Gold Coast; the impungu I have never heard of but on the coast of Angola. The chimpenza, at its full growth, is from two to three feet high on all-fours; is very strong-much stronger than man in proportion—as appears by a droll adventure that happened near Cabenda with one of these animals a little before my son was there last. As the women in that country do mostly the work of the field, one of them told her husband that something ate the corn and sugar-canes. He accordingly gets up next morning, loads his gun, and, seeing some of these animals among the corn, fires among them and wounds one, which happened to be a female. The husband, alarmed at its cries and exasperated, pursues the man, who had just time to get into his house and shut the door before the chimpenza came up with him. It soon burst open the door, seized the man, drags him out, and hauls him along. The wife cries out and alarms the neighbors, saying an old man with a white face, which the chimpenza resembled, had run away with her husband. They gathered as many as they could

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