678 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



c 



finest specimens ever seen was kept a few years since in the Jardin des Plantes in 

 Paris, where the mild climate, agreeable diet (he drank his pint of Bordeaux daily), 

 and lively society of the French maintained him in wonderful health and spirits. 



The body of the chimpanzee is covered with long hair on the head, shoulders, and 

 back, but much thinner on the breast and belly. The arms and legs are not so dis- 

 proportionate as those of the orang, the fore fingers not quite touching the knees when 

 the animal stands upright. The upper part of the head is very flat, with a retiring 

 forehead, and a prominent bony ridge over the eye-brows, the mouth is wide, the ears 

 large, the nose flat, and the face of a blackish-brown color. 



From this short notice it will be seen at once that while the Chimpanzee has not 

 the least claim to beauty, he is yet far from equalling the hideous deformity of the 

 Gorilla, whom M. Du Chaillu, the first white man who ever saw the creature alive, has 

 so prominently introduced to public notice. This savage animal, which is covered 

 with black hair like the chimpanzee, and resembles it in the proportion of its body and 

 limbs, though its form is much more robust, unites a most ferociotfe and undaunted 

 temper with an herculean bodily strength, and is said to hold undisputed dominion 

 of the hill-forests in the interior of Lower Guinea, forcing even the panther to 

 ignominious flight. To kill a gorilla is considered by the negroes as a most courageous 

 exploit ; and Dr. Savage, an American missionary on the coast of Guinea, who, in a 

 memoir published at Boston in the year 1847, was the first to point out the generic 

 differences between this formidable ape and the chimpanzee, tells us that a slave having 

 shot a male and female gorilla, whose skeletons afterwards came into his possession, 

 was immediately set at liberty and proclaimed the prince of hunters. 



Du Chaillu's description* of his first encounter with an adult gorilla, which entirely 

 agrees with the accounts given to Dr. Savage by the natives of the mode of attack 

 of this monstrous creature, shows that this distinction was by no means unmerited, and 

 that it requires all the coolness and determination of an accomplished sportsman to 

 face an animal of such appalling ferocity and power. 



"The underbrush swayed rapidly just ahead, and presently before us stood an 

 immense male gorilla. He had gone through the jungle on his all-fours, but when he 

 saw our party he erected himself, and looked us boldly in the face. He stood about a 

 dozen yards from us, and was a sight I think I shall never forget. Nearly six feet 

 high (he proved four inches shorter,) with immense body, huge chest, and great 

 muscular arms, with fiercely glaring, large, deep-gray eyes, and a hellish expression 

 of face, which seemed to me like some nightmare vision ; thus stood before us the 

 king of the African forest. He was not afraid of us. He stood there and beat his 

 breast with his huge fists, till it resounded like an immense bass-drum, which is their 

 mode of offering defiance, meantime giving vent to roar after roar. The roar of the 

 gorilla is the most singular and awful noise heard in these African woods. It begins 

 with a sharp bark like an angry dog, then glides into a deep bass roll which literally 

 and closely resembles the roll -of distant thunder along the sky, for which I have 

 been sometimes tempted to take it when I did not see the animal. So deep is it that 

 it seems to proceed less from the mouth and throat than from the deep chest and vast 

 paunch. His eye began to flash deeper fire as we stood motionless on the defensive, 

 and the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and 



* Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, 98. 



