I
ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE
MAN-LIKE APES.
Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern
investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is
singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one,
presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist:
the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and
though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in
the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in
essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or
horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but
notorious.
I have not met with any notice of one of these MAN-LIKE APES of earlier
date than that contained in Pigafetta's "Description of the Kingdom of
Congo,"[1] drawn up from the notes of a Portuguese sailor, Eduardo
Lopez, and published in 1598. The tenth chapter of this work is entitled
"De Animalibus quæ in hac provincia reperiuntur," and contains a brief
passage to the effect that "in the Songan country, on the banks of the
Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the
nobles by imitating human gestures." As this might apply to almost any
kind of apes, I should have thought little of it, had not the brothers
De Bry, whose engravings illustrate the work, thought fit, in their
eleventh "Argumentum," to figure two of these "Simiæ magnatum deliciæ."
So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the
woodcut (Fig. 1), and it will be observed that they are tail-less,
long-armed, and large-eared; and about the size of Chimpanzees. It may
be that these apes are as much figments of the imagination of the
ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon
which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the
artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful
description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though
these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and
definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 17th
century, and are due to an Englishman.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Simiæ magnatum deliciæ.--De Bry, 1598.]
The first edition of that most amusing old book, "Purchas his
Pilgrimage," was published in 1613, and therein are to be found many
references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms "Andrew Battell
(my neere neighbour, dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel
Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of Saint
Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of Angola"; and again,
"my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived in the kingdom of Congo many
yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among whom
he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the
woodes." From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas was amazed to
hear "of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the
height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with
strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men
and women in their whole bodily shape.[2] They lived on such wilde
fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on
the trees."
This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than
a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another
work--"Purchas his Pilgrimes," published in 1625, by the same
author--which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited.
The chapter is entitled, "The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of
Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived
there and in the adjioining regions neere eighteene yeeres." And the
sixth section of this chapter is headed--"Of the Provinces of Bongo,
Calongo, Mayombe, Manikesocke, Motimbas: of the Ape Monster Pongo, their
hunting: Idolatries; and divers other observations."
"This province (Calongo) toward the east bordereth upon
Bongo, and toward the north upon Mayombe, which is nineteen
leagues from Longo along the coast.
"This province of Mayombe is all woods and groves, so
overgrowne that a man may travaile twentie days in the shadow
without any sunne or heat. Here is no kind of corne nor
graine, so that the people liveth onely upon plantanes and
roots of sundrie sorts, very good; and nuts; nor any kinde of
tame cattell, nor hens.
"But they have great store of elephant's flesh, which they
greatly esteeme, and many kinds of wild beasts; and great
store of fish. Here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the
northward of Cape Negro,[3] which is the port of Mayombe.
Sometimes the Portugals lade log-wood in this bay. 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 ilands and people dwelling in them. The
woods are so covered with baboones, monkies, apes and
parrots, that it will feare any man to 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 Engeco. This Pongo is in
all proportion 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 haire 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 alwaies upon his legs, and carrieth his
hands clasped in the nape of his necke when he goeth upon the
ground. They sleepe 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 cannot
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, and pieces of wood, that they will
runne roaring away from them. Those Pongoes are never taken
alive because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold
one of them; but yet they take many of their young ones with
poisoned arrowes.
"The young Pongo hangeth on his mother's belly 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 heaps of boughs and wood, which is commonly found in
the forest."[4]
It does not appear difficult to identify the exact region of which
Battell speaks. Longo is doubtless the name of the place usually spelled
Loango on our maps. Mayombe still lies some nineteen leagues northward
from Loango, along the coast; and Cilongo or Kilonga, Manikesocke, and
Motimbas are yet registered by geographers. The Cape Negro of Battell,
however, cannot be the modern Cape Negro in 16° S., since Loango itself
is in 4° S. latitude. On the other hand, the "great river called Banna"
corresponds very well with the "Camma" and "Fernand Vas," of modern
geographers, which form a great delta on this part of the African coast.
Now this "Camma" country is situated about a degree and a-half south of
the Equator, while a few miles to the north of the line lies the Gaboon,
and a degree or so north of that, the Money River--both well known to
modern naturalists as localities where the largest of man-like Apes has
been obtained. Moreover, at the present day, the word Engeco, or
N'schego, is applied by the natives of these regions to the smaller of
the two great Apes which inhabit them; so that there can be no rational
doubt that Andrew Battell spoke of that which he knew of his own
knowledge, or, at any rate, by immediate report from the natives of
Western Africa. The "Engeco," however, is that "other monster" whose
nature Battell "forgot to relate," while the name "Pongo"--applied to
the animal whose characters and habits are so fully and carefully
described--seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and
signification. Indeed, there is evidence that not only in Battell's
time, but up to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different
sense from that in which he employs it.
For example, the second chapter of Purchas' work, which I have just
quoted, contains "A Description and Historicall Declaration of the
Golden Kingdom of Guinea, &c. &c. Translated from the Dutch, and
compared also with the Latin," wherein it is stated (p. 986) that--
"The River Gaboon lyeth about fifteen miles northward
from Rio de Angra, and eight miles northward from Cape de
Lope Gonsalvez (Cape Lopez), and is right under the
Equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from St. Thomas,
and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. At the
mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure
fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily with the
streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. This
river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles
broad; but when you are about the Iland called _Pongo_,
it is not above two miles broad.... On both sides the
river there standeth many trees.... The Iland called
_Pongo_, which hath a monstrous high hill."
The French naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late M.
Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire's excellent essay on the Gorilla,[5] note
in similar terms the width of the Gaboon, the trees that line its banks
down to the water's edge, and the strong current that sets out of it.
They describe two islands in its estuary;--one low, called Perroquet;
the other high, presenting three conical hills, called Coniquet; and one
of them, M. Franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the Chief of
Coniquet was called _Meni-Pongo_, meaning thereby Lord of _Pongo_; and
that the _N'Pongues_ (as, in agreement with Dr. Savage, he affirms the
natives call themselves) term the estuary of the Gaboon itself
_N'Pongo_.
It is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand their
applications of words to things, that one is at first inclined to
suspect Battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his
"greater monster" still abounds, with the name of the animal itself. But
he is so right about other matters (including the name of the "lesser
monster") that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and,
on the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years'
later date speaks of the name "Boggoe," as applied to a great Ape, by
the inhabitants of quite another part of Africa--Sierra Leone.
[Illustration: _Homo Sylvestris. Orang Outang._