202 



ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



fforno Sylvejtris. 

 Orang Outang. 



streame which runneth out of the river into the sea. This 

 river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles broad ; 

 but when you are about the Hand called Pongo, it is not 

 above two miles broad. ... On both sides the river there 

 standeth many trees. . . . The Hand called Pongo, which 

 hath a monstrous high hill." 



The French naval officers, whose letters are appended 

 to the late M. Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire's excellent 

 essay on the Gorilla,* note in similar terms the width 



of the Gaboon, the trees that 

 line its banks down to the 

 water's edge, and the strong 

 current that sets out of 

 it. They describe two 

 islands in its estuary ; 

 one low, 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' Pongu.es 

 (as, in agreement with 

 Dr. Savage, he affirms 

 the natives call them- 

 selves) term the estuary 

 of the Gaboon itself 

 N'Pongo. 



It is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand 

 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 philo- 



Ipius, 1641. 



