280 ANDREW BATTEL'S ACCOUNT. 



his legs, for they have no calfe. He goeth alwaies upon his legs, 

 and carrieth his hands clasped on the nape of his necke when he 

 goeth upon the ground. They sleepe in trees and build shelter 

 for the raine. They feed upon the fruit which they find in the 

 woods, and upon ants, for they eat no kind of flesh. They 

 cannot speake, and have no understanding more than a beast. 

 The people of the countrie when they travaile in the woods, 

 make fires whea they sleepe in the night ; and in the morning, 

 when they are gone, the Pongo will come and seat about the fire 

 till it goeth out, for they have no understanding to lay the wood 

 together. They goe many together, and kill many negroe that 

 travaile in the woods. Many times they fall upon elephants 

 which come to feed where they be, and so beat them with their 

 clubbed fists and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring 

 away from them. The Pongos are never taken alive, because 

 they are so strong ten men cannot hold one of them ; but they 

 take many of their young ones with poisoned arrows. The 

 young Pongo hangeth on his mother's belly with his hands fast 

 clasped about her, so that, when the country people kill any of 

 the females, they take the young which hangs fast \\pon the 

 mother. When they die among themselves, they cover the dead 

 with great heapes of boughs and wood, which is commonly found 

 in the forests." 



It seems not improbable, from some of the circumstances men- 

 tioned in this account of the Pongo, that Battel was acquainted 

 with both the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla ; but it is evident 

 that, if this were so, he has strangely jumbled together the 

 habits of the two animals, and made up a story which, as a whole, 

 is true of neither the one nor the other. 



The supposed references to the Gorilla in the works of 

 travellers of later times are all of such a vague and exaggerated 

 character, that it is impossible to say Avhether they are mere 

 travellers' tales, fabricated for the purpose of exciting the astonish- 

 ment and testing the credulity of the readers, or whether they 

 are the mere reports of native tradition. In either case they are 

 altogether unreliable, nor does there seem to have been any real 

 and veracious account of the animal, however meagre, till the 

 year 1819, when it is first mentioned under its native name in 

 the " Narrative of a Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashan- 

 tee," by T. E. Bowditch. In speaking of a visit to the Gaboon, 



