MONKEYS 9 



Similarly, the discovery of the gorilla has been so 

 generally attributed to Mr. du Chaillu, that justice 

 makes 'it needful to remind our readers of the debt due 

 to American discoverers and describers of a preceding 

 generation. 



Nevertheless it seems probable that the animal had 

 been described, and even specimens of it obtained, more 

 than two thousand three hundred years earlier. In 

 510 B.C., the Carthaginian Government decreed that 

 thirty thousand persons should be transported south of 

 the Pillars of Hercules to found Phoenician colonies on 

 the West African coast. Hanno set out accordingly with 

 a fleet of sixty vessels, and subsequently read a report of 

 his expedition to the Senate at Carthage.* Therein he 

 stated that after a long journey they entered a gulf, and 

 near it found a number of " wild men " entirely covered 

 with hair, who were called " gorillas " by his interpreters. 

 " We pursued them," he says, " but could not take any 

 of the men on account of their quickness in climbing, but 

 we took three women, who bit and tore those who carried 

 them off, so that we were obliged to kill them. We then 

 skinned them and carried their skins home with us." 

 Two of these, stuffed, were placed by Hanno in the 

 temple of Astarte at Carthage, where they remained till 

 that city was captured by the Romans. 



The extent of Africa inhabited by this animal is not 

 large, only including the forest region, extending inland 

 between the mouths of the Cameroon and Congo Rivers 



Its smaller cousin, the chimpanzee, is found over a 

 much wider range, namely, from the Gambia to the 

 Benguela, extending inland as far as 28 East longitude. 

 The earliest notice of what was probably this animal 



* "Ann. des Sc. Nat. " (third series), Zoology, vol xvi., 1851, 

 pp. 184-188. 



