PAN 247 



skulls to what I had previously secured, but many interesting fragments 

 I much regretted being obliged to leave behind, having no alternative 

 on account of my limited means of transport. 



"It was not my good fortune to witness a Chimpanzee hunt. This 

 is always an arduous undertaking, involving many difficulties. Accord- 

 ing to the statements of the Nyam-nyam themselves the chase requires 

 a party of twenty or thirty resolute hunters, who have to ascend the 

 trees, which are some eighty feet high, and to clamber after the agile 

 and crafty brutes until they can drive them into the snares prepared 

 beforehand. Once entangled in a net, the beasts are without much 

 further difficulty killed by means of spears. However, in some cases 

 they will defend themselves savagely and with all the fury of despair. 

 Driven by the hunters into a corner, they were said to wrest the lances 

 from the men's hands and to make good use of them against the 

 adversary. Nothing was to be more dreaded than to be bitten by their 

 tremendous fangs, or getting into the grasp of their powerful arms. 

 Just as in the woods of the west, all manner of stories were rife as 

 to how they had carried off young girls, and how they defended their 

 plunder, and how they constructed wonderful nests upon the topmost 

 boughs of the trees — all these tales, of course, being but the purest 

 fabrications. 



"Among the Nyam-nyams the Chimpanzee is called 'Rana' or 

 'Manjarooma,' in the Arabic of the Soudan where long ago its existence 

 seems to have been known it was included in the general name of 'Ba- 

 ahm.' The life that the Rana leads is very much like what is led by the 

 Ourang-utan in Borneo and is spent almost entirely in the trees, the 

 woods on the river banks being the chief resort of the animals. But 

 in the populous Manbuttoo country, where the woodlands have been 

 thinned to permit the extensive cultivation of plantains, the Chim- 

 panzees exhibit great fear of man, and pass their existence in com- 

 parative solitariness. Like the Gorillas, they are not found in herds, 

 but either in pairs or even quite alone, and it is only the young which 

 occasionally may be seen in groups." 



That they carry away young girls is most likely a fictitious tale, 

 but that they build nests in the trees like some of their relatives in 

 West Africa is by no means improbable. Matschie (1. c.) gives the 

 following localities for this species : Uelle Makua, Nyam-nyam, 

 (Schweinfurth) ; Manda, on the west shore of Lake Tanganyika, 

 (Reichard and Bohm) ; Manyema, west of Lake Tanganyika. (Major 

 Dr. von Wissmann) ; Ruanda, (Hauptmann Langheld) ; Akangaru- 

 Quelle east of the Russissi, between the boundaries of Urimdi and 



