ground, or more rarely support themselves on the flat palm, while
the bent soles of the feet are also in contact with the ground.
Their gait is tottering; the movement of the body, which is never
in an upright position as in man, but bent forward, rolls to some
extent from one side to another. They are skilful climbers, and when
ranging from tree to tree, will go to their very tops. The gorilla is
regarded as a dreadful and very dangerous animal by the negroes who
inhabit the same country; though Professor Hartmann considers that Du
Chaillu’s descriptions are greatly exaggerated ‘for the benefit of
his readers.’ When the animal is scared by man, he generally takes
to flight screaming, and he only assumes the defensive if wounded or
driven into a corner. At such times his size, strength, and dexterity
combine to render him a formidable enemy. ‘He sends forth a kind of
howl or furious yelp, stands up on his hind-legs like an enraged bear,
advances with clumsy gait in this position and attacks his enemy. At
the same time the hair on his head and the nape of his neck stands
erect, his teeth are displayed, and his eyes flash with savage fury.
He beats his massive breast with his fists, or beats the air with
them. Koppenfels says that if no further provocation is given, and his
opponent gradually retreats before the animal’s rage has reached its
highest point, he does not return to the attack. In other cases he
parries the blow directed against him with the skill of a practised
fighter; and, as is also done by the bear, he grasps his opponent by
the arm and crunches it, or else throws the man down and rends him with
his terrible canine teeth.’
Enough of this silvan monster in his wild state. Let us turn to him
in captivity; and we can only take one out of several individuals
described. The one referred to was caught young, and gradually
accustomed to a mixed diet preparatory to his being brought from Africa
to Europe. While still with his first possessors, he was allowed to run
about as he chose, being only watched as little children are watched.
He clung to human companionship; showed no trace of mischievous,
malicious, or savage qualities, but was sometimes self-willed. He
expressed the ideas which occurred to him by different sounds, one of
which was the characteristic tone of importunate petition, while other
sounds expressed fright or horror, and in rare instances a sullen and
defiant growl might be heard. In moments of exuberant satisfaction, he
would raise himself on his hind-legs, rub his breast with both fists,
or, after quite a human fashion, clap his hands together—this an action
which no one had taught him. His dexterity in eating was particularly
remarkable. He took up a cup or glass with instinctive care, clasped
the vessel with both hands, and set it down again so softly and
carefully that the narrator cannot remember his breaking a single
article of household goods. ‘His behaviour at meal-times was quiet
and mannerly; he only took as much as he could hold with his thumb,
fore, and middle finger, and looked on with indifference when any of
the different forms of food heaped up before him were taken away.
If, however, nothing was given him, he growled impatiently, looked
narrowly at all the dishes from his place at table, and accompanied
every plate carried off by the negro boys with an angry snarl, or a
short resentful cough, and sometimes he sought to seize the arm of the
passer-by, in order to express his displeasure more plainly by a bite
or a blow. He drank by suction, stooping over the vessel, without even
putting his hands into it or upsetting it, and in the case of smaller
vessels, he carried them to his mouth.’ He was clever in manifesting
his wishes, and often expressed them in an urgent and caressing manner.
Child-like, he took a special pleasure in making a noise by beating on
hollow articles, and he seldom omitted an opportunity of drumming on
casks, dishes, or tin trays, whenever he passed by them. After being
brought to Berlin, however, he did not live long, dying of a ‘galloping
consumption.’
The second species of anthropoid apes is the chimpanzee. The full-grown
animal of this species is smaller than the adult gorilla. An aged male
chimpanzee has broad, rather rounded shoulders, a powerful chest, long
muscular arms reaching to the knees, and a long hand, which seems to be
very slender in comparison with that of the gorilla. Like the latter
animal, he is a denizen of forests, and subsists on wild fruits of
various kinds. He lives either in separate families or in small groups
of families. Where he inhabits the forest regions of Central Africa,
his habits are more arboreal than those of the gorilla; elsewhere,
as on the south-west coast, he seems to live more upon the ground.
His gait is weak and vacillating, and he can stand erect but a short
time. These animals send forth loud cries; and the horrible wails, the
furious shrieks and howls that may be heard morning and evening, and
often in the night, make these creatures truly hateful to travellers.
When chimpanzees are attacked, they strike the ground with their
hands, but they do not, as the gorilla does, beat their breasts with
their fists. As for the penthouses which Du Chaillu asserts these
animals build, Professor Hartmann is somewhat doubtful regarding
them. An illustration of this structure, as given by Du Chaillu, has
been imitated in London, but this, in Hartmann’s opinion, has been
embellished. ‘Koppenfels believes that the so-called penthouse is only
the family nest, under which the male places himself; while Reichenfels
thinks it possible that some parasitic growth, perhaps a _Loranthus_,
gave rise to the belief that such a penthouse is erected.’
A male chimpanzee, which was kept in the Berlin Aquarium in 1876,
was remarkable for his excessive liveliness, and was on particularly
friendly terms with a little two-year-old boy, the son of Dr Hermes,
the director of the aquarium. ‘When the child entered the room, the
chimpanzee ran to meet him, embraced and kissed him, seized his hand
and drew him to the sofa, that they might play together. The child was
often rough with his playfellow, pulling him by the mouth, pinching his
ears, or lying on him, yet the chimpanzee was never known to lose his
temper. He behaved very differently to boys between six and ten years
old. When a number of schoolboys visited the office, he ran towards
them, went from one to the other, shook one of them, bit the leg of
another, seized the jacket of a third with the right hand, jumped
up, and with the left gave him a sound box on the ear. In short, he
played the wildest pranks. It seemed as if he were infected with the
joyous excitement of youth, which induced him to riot with the troop of
schoolboys.’
One day when Dr Hermes gave his nine-year-old son a slight tap on
the head for some blunder in his arithmetic, the chimpanzee, who was
also sitting at the table, thought it his duty likewise to show his
displeasure, and gave the boy a sound box on the ear. If, again, Dr
Hermes pointed out to him that some one was staring or mocking at him,
and said: ‘Do not put up with it,’ the creature cried, ‘Oh! oh!’ and
rushed at the person in question in order to strike or bite him, or
express his displeasure in some other way. When he saw the director
was writing, he often seized a pen, dipped it in the inkstand, and
scrawled upon the paper. ‘He displayed a special talent for cleaning
the window-panes of the aquarium. It was amusing to see him squeezing
up the cloth, moistening the pane with his lips, and then rubbing it
hard, passing quickly from one place to another.’
Of a female chimpanzee, Massica by name, kept in the Dresden Zoological
Gardens, some extraordinary things are told. She was a remarkable
creature, not only in her external habits, but in her disposition. ‘At
one moment she would sit still with a brooding air, only occasionally
darting a mischievous, flashing glance at the spectators; at another
she took pleasure in feats of strength, or she roamed to and fro in her
spacious inclosure like an angry beast of prey.’ She would sometimes
rattle the bars of her cage with a violence that made the spectators
uneasy; at other times would claw at people who entered the vestibule
of her cage, and try to tear their clothes. She was fond of playing
with old hats, which she set upon her head, and if the top was quite
torn off, she drew it down upon her neck.
But Massica was frequently ungovernable. She hardly obeyed any one
except Schöpf, the director of the gardens; and when in good-humour she
would sit on his knee and put her muscular arms round his neck with a
caressing gesture. But, in spite of this, he was never quite secure
from her roguish tricks. She was able to use a spoon, though somewhat
awkwardly; and she could pour from larger vessels into smaller ones
without spilling the liquor. If she was left alone for any time, she
tried to open the lock of her cage; and she once succeeded in doing
so, but on that occasion she stole the key. It was kept hanging on
the wall; and she, observing it, took it down, hid it in her armpit,
and crept quietly back to her cage. When the occasion served her
purpose, with the key she easily opened the lock, and walked out. She
also knew how to use a gimlet, to wring out wet clothes, and to blow
her nose with a handkerchief. If allowed to do so, she would draw off
the keeper’s boots, then scramble with them up to some place out of
reach, and, when he asked for them, throw them at his head. She, like
the clever gorilla before described, died of consumption. When her
illness began, she became apathetic, and looked about with a vacant,
unobservant stare. Just before her death, she put her arms round
Schöpf’s neck when he came to visit her, looked at him placidly, kissed
him three times, stretched out her hands to him, and died. ‘The last
moments of Anthropoids,’ remarks our author, ‘have their tragic side!’
Did space permit, we might give many other details of a similar
character as to the habits of the orang-utan, the gibbon, and others
of the larger apes, both in their wild state and in captivity; but the
above are sufficient to illustrate the family to which they belong. A
much more interesting matter remains to be considered, namely, what
is called the ‘anthropomorphism’ of these creatures, that is, their
relation physically to the highest of all the mammalia, man.
Professor Hartmann observes that Huxley’s statement, that the lowest
apes are further removed from the highest apes than the latter are
from men, is, according to his experience, still perfectly valid. ‘It
cannot be denied that the highest order of the animal world is closely
connected with the highest created being.’ But it does not follow
therefrom that man is descended from apes, or is simply an improved
kind of ape. There is, we fear, still prevailing among large sections
of intelligent persons the belief that Darwin’s theory was intended
to prove that the monkey was the progenitor of man. Of course no one
who reads Darwin’s works for himself would ever go away with such a
misconception of the whole question. What Darwin’s hypothesis suggested
was, not that man was descended from the monkey, but that both man and
the monkey may be descendants of a common progenitor, a common type,
now extinct, and of which no indisputable traces have yet been found.
From this common type, or ground-form, so to speak, the process of
development may, according to Darwin, have resulted in two distinct
branches or offshoots—the one branch of development ending in the
monkey tribe, the other branch ending in man. It is, in the absence
of any certain traces of the extinct common type or progenitor, not a
subject on which to dogmatise, but is a theory or hypothesis which,
in the opinion of Darwin and many other scientists after him, best
accounts for the morphological development of man viewed merely from
the physical side.
Professor Hartmann admits that his investigations have not brought
the problem any nearer to a solution. A baby gorilla is much nearer
in physical constitution to a human baby, than the full-grown gorilla
is to the mature man; thus indicating that the process of development
within the lifetime of an Anthropoid is not in the direction of
improvement or further approximation to the human type, but is in the
direction of retrogression, or further removal from the human type. ‘A
great chasm,’ he says, ‘between Man and Anthropoids is constituted, as
I believe, by the fact that the human race is capable of education,
and is able to acquire the highest mental culture, while the most
intelligent Anthropoid can only receive a certain mechanical training.
And even to this training a limit is set by the surly temper displayed
by Anthropoids as they get older.’ So that it would seem as if the
development of the Anthropoids morally, if we may so use the word here,
is, like their physical development, not one of progress or improvement
_in the individual_. These larger apes, therefore, with all their
striking resemblances to the human form, are not moving nearer towards
Man, but merely remain Man-like.
SPIRITED AWAY.
IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.
It was about eight o’clock on a certain November evening in the year
188-, that I found myself one of a number of passengers disgorged
from a train on the platform of the St Pancras Station. I was just
turned nineteen years of age, and this was the first time I had set
foot in London. My journey had been a long and tedious one, and I was
thoroughly chilled and worn out when I stepped out of the carriage. I
had started from home at six in the morning for a twelve miles’ walk to
the nearest station, and after that, had spent hour after hour, first
in one third-class carriage, and then in another, for my home was in a
remote district many miles from any main line to the metropolis. I may
just add that I had but lately recovered from a long illness, having
outgrown my strength—or so my friends averred—and to that fact some
portion of the weariness I now felt was no doubt attributable.
However, here I was at last, really and truly, in London—in the great
city. It was the consummation of the dreams of my youth, as it is of
the dreams of so many hundreds of ambitious, country-bred lads. I
had no luggage to detain me, the sole article I had brought with me
being a small handbag containing a few necessaries: my portmanteau was
to follow in the course of a couple of days. As I was making my way
towards the exit, I caught sight of the refreshment room. I had had
nothing to eat since morning but a few biscuits, and now the pangs of
hunger began to make themselves felt. I pushed open the swing-doors
of the restaurant, and going up to the counter, I asked for a cup of
coffee and a couple of sandwiches. While I was being served, I counted
over again the small amount of money in my purse and asked myself
whether I could afford to take a cab to my destination. Why not walk?
The night was young, and the street in which my friend lived, being
in the heart of London, could not be more than two or, at the most,
three miles away. Besides, there seemed a spice of adventure, something
that would serve me to talk about in time to come, in finding my way,
utter stranger as I was, alone and by night through the streets of
London—those streets about which I had read so much, and had so often
pictured in my thoughts. I decided that I would walk.
Here it becomes needful to mention that my destination was the lodgings
of a certain friend, whose name, for the purposes of this narrative,
shall be Gascoigne. I call him my friend, and such he was, although
he was four years older than myself. We were both natives of the
same small country town; his parents and mine were old friends; and
owing to the similarity of our tastes and pursuits, he and I had been
much thrown together up to the date of his leaving home to push his
fortunes in London. We had kept up an unbroken correspondence after
his departure; and now that my father had lighted on evil days, and it
became imperative that I should turn out into the world, Gascoigne had
at once come to the rescue. I must leave home, he wrote, and take up my
quarters with him till he should succeed in finding some situation that
would be likely to suit me, which he had little doubt about being able
to do in the course of a few weeks at the most. And thus it fell out
that here I was in London.
Outside the station, I found a policeman, from whom I inquired
my nearest way to the Strand, in a street off which thoroughfare
Gascoigne’s rooms were situated. The night was damp and raw, with a
sort of thin, wet mist in the atmosphere, which blurred the lamps
and the lights in the shops a little way off, and made the pavement
greasy and unpleasant to walk on. But little recked I about the
weather. I was pacing London streets, and to me, for the time being,
that was all-sufficient. The coffee had warmed me; the fatigue I had
felt previously was forgotten as I walked on and on in a sort of
waking dream. More than once I had to ask my way, and more than once
I wandered from the direct road; but at length, after about an hour’s
walking, I found the street I was in search of, and two minutes later
I knocked at the door of No. 16. My summons was responded to by a
middle-aged woman—Gascoigne’s landlady, as I afterwards found—who, in
answer to my inquiry, informed me that my friend had been called out of
town two days previously on important business, and was not expected
home till the morrow. I turned from the door with a sinking heart,
feeling more lost and lonely than I had ever felt before. I was in the
heart of the great Babylon, and knew not a single soul out of all the
teeming thousands around me. Presently, I found myself in the Strand
again, and there I came to a halt for a little while, gazing on a scene
so fresh and strange to me. The glare, the uproar, the interminable
tangle of vehicles, the hundreds of human beings, young and old, rich
and poor, passing ceaselessly to and fro, winding in and out without
touching each other, like midges dancing in the sun—all these affected
my spirits like a tonic, and in a very little while put all morbid
fancies to flight. What if I were alone in London without a creature
anywhere that I knew—there were thousands of others in a similar
plight. Gascoigne would be back on the morrow, and for this one night I
must make shift with a bed at some decent coffee-house or inexpensive
hotel. It was too early yet to think of turning in; it would be time
enough an hour hence to set about finding quarters for the night.
I wandered on, heedless whither my footsteps might lead me, my
weariness all but forgotten in the novelty of the scenes which met my
country-bred eyes at every turn. As the clocks were striking ten, I
found myself on one of the bridges, gazing over the parapet at the
black-flowing river as it washed and swirled through the arches under
my feet. A thick fog was slowly creeping up, and even while I was
gazing at the fringe of lamps on some other bridge, its dark mantle
closed round them, and shut them in as completely as though they had
never been. A few minutes later, the fog had reached the spot where I
was standing, and had caught me in a damp, sickly embrace, which in a
very little while sufficed to chill me to the marrow, and blotted out
as completely as with a wet sponge all the seething world around me.
When I began to move again after my halt, I realised for the first time
how thoroughly weary and dead-beat I was, and that I must no longer
delay seeking out a lodging for the night. The fog was thickening
fast, and it was impossible to see more than three or four yards in
any direction. In my bewilderment, instead of turning back towards
the Strand side of the bridge, as my intention was, I seem to have
unwittingly crossed to the Surrey side, seeing that, a few minutes
later, I found myself in a maze of narrow, tortuous streets, in which
gin palaces and fried-fish shops seemed to be the chief places of
entertainment.
I wandered on, turning from one thoroughfare into another, feeling in
that thick, black fog more utterly lost and bewildered, even in the
streets of London, than I should have done if set down at midnight
in the heart of Salisbury Plain with nothing but the stars to guide
me on my way. In the district in which I now found myself there
seemed to be no small hotels where a stranger might find cheap but
decent accommodation for the night—nothing but flaring taverns and
low coffee-shops. Three or four of these latter I passed which, even
dead-beat as I was, I could not summon up courage to enter—they looked
too unsavoury and repulsive to a youth of countrified tastes like
myself. At length I came to one which seemed more promising than any I
had yet seen—cleaner and neater in every way, as far as I could judge
by peering through the window. It was merely a coffee-shop, with some
cups and saucers and a few muffins, teacakes, and other comestibles in
the window; but what had more attraction for me than anything else was
the welcome legend, ‘Good Beds,’ painted in black letters on the lamp
over the door. I hesitated no longer, but pushed open the swing-doors
and entered.
My first glance round showed me that the place was one much frequented
by foreigners; and when the _cafetier_ himself came down the room to
inquire my pleasure, I saw at once that, whatever else his nationality
might be, he was certainly not an Englishman. My wants were simple—a
chop and some coffee. I put the question of bed aside for the present,
till I should have seen more of the place and its frequenters. The
_cafetier_ answered me with much politeness, but in very broken
English, that my requirements should be at once attended to, and that,
meanwhile—with a comprehensive wave of his hand—the newspapers, English
and foreign, were at the service of monsieur. He did not look much
like a coffee-house keeper, with his long grizzled hair, his high bald
forehead, his dark deep-set eyes, in each of which glowed a spark of
vivid fire, and his thin white hands; there seemed about him too much
of the air of a man of breeding and education for such an occupation.
He was still addressing himself to me, when there was a sudden
irruption into the room of a little black-eyed, short-haired,
bullet-headed waiter, French or Swiss most probably, in a black jacket
and short white apron, who, dancing up to me, took possession of me
at once, divined my wants in a moment, and pirouetted off to fetch
me my coffee, pending the cooking of my chop, leaving his master
extinguished, so to speak, both morally and physically. ‘Ah, Jean will
attend to monsieur,’ said the latter, putting his hands to his sides
and straightening his long thin back. ‘Jean, he is a good fellow, and
will make monsieur comfortable.’ And with that he lounged slowly away
to a small counter at the upper end of the room, behind which he seated
himself, and became at once immersed in the perusal of some foreign
journal.
I was still looking at him, sitting with my arms folded over the table,
when my eyelids closed unconsciously, and I dropped asleep as I sat—but
only for a few moments, for Jean was quickly at my side with the
coffee and a roll, flicking some imaginary crumbs off the table with
his _serviette_ as a polite way of arousing me. A draught of coffee
imparted new life to me for a time, and I could afford to look round
with some degree of curiosity. In all, there were about a dozen people
in the place. Two or three customers got up and went away, while others
came in and took their places. Others there were who seemed habitual
frequenters of the place, and sat playing draughts or dominoes, smoking
their cigarettes, and sipping at their coffee or chocolate between
times. Only one here and there was English; the rest of them were
unmistakable foreigners, of various types and nationalities, but all
readily recognisable as such even to my untutored eyes. Nimble-handed
Jean was equal to the requirements of each and all.