Liberia ^ 



of Caucasian blood and a still smaller degree of Caucasian 

 civilisation reached the unadulterated Negroes of prehistoric 

 Liberia. 



So far as the pure-blooded Caucasian is concerned, his 

 first historical appearance in these latitudes was in the persons 

 of Hanno the Carthaginian and his crews of Phoenicians and 

 Moors. Hanno left Carthage in perhaps 520 b.c. ;^ and 

 after visiting and reinforcing the Carthaginian trading colonies 

 along the north ajid west coast of Morocco, he founded 

 the settlement on Kerne Island in the Rio de Oro inlet, passed 

 the mouth of the River Senegal, Cape Verde, and the 

 Highlands of French Guinea and of Sierra Leone, and 

 apparently got as far as the swampy island of Sherbro — 

 possibly even as far as Cape Mount and the very beginning 

 of modern Liberian territory. On Sherbro Island " his sailors 

 captured wild, hairy men, whom they called (in the Greek 

 rendering of the Punic word) gorilla. This term they are 

 said to have derived from their " interpreters," showing that 

 these may possibly have been men of the Fula or Wolof race.^ 

 If they did not capture specimens of a low and savage type 

 of real wild man (which might have still been lingering in 

 Africa), then in all probability the story or the legend refers 

 to nothing more than the chimpanzees, which are still common 

 in the forest-covered coast region of Western Liberia and 

 Eastern Sierra Leone. 



Hanno's voyage took place about five hundred years before 



' Vide Bimbury, History of Ancient Geography, p. 332, vol. i. The date 

 of the " Periplus," or voyage of Hanno, is very uncertain. It may have occurred 

 as late as 470 b.c. or as early as 520 B.C., according as the "Hanno" in 

 question was the father or the son of the "dated" General Hamilcar. 



^ Or on an island in a lake on Sherbro ? Macaulay Island ? 



^ Gor- is the root for "man" in both Fula and Wolof. With one of the 

 suffixes added it would make a combination not unlike " Gorilla." 



