4 THE MAX-LIKE APES. i 



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 be termed, 

 of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in fea- 

 ture of their limmes, with strength proportion- 

 able, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men 

 and women in their whole bodily shape.* 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 

 adioining regions neere eighteene yeeres." And 

 the sixth section of this chapter is headed — " Of 

 the Provinces of Bongo, Calongo, Mayombe, Mani- 

 kesocke, Motimbas: of the x\pe Monster Pongo, 

 their hunting: Idolatries; and divers other obser- 

 vations." 



* " Except this that their legges had no calves." — [Ed. 

 1G2G.] And in a marginal note, "These great apes are 

 called Pongo's." 



