I THE PONGO 9 



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 mis- 

 understand 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. 



But I must leave this question to be settled by 

 philologers and travellers ; and I should hardly 

 have dwelt so long upon it except for the curious 

 part played by this word 'Pongo' in the later 

 history of the man-like Apes. 



The generation which succeeded Battell saw 

 the first of the man-like Apes which was ever 

 brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit 

 found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' 



