The Ape3.- 



-MA5IMALIA.- 



-The Chimpanzee. 



17 



selves with clubs, with which they attack and often 

 kill the negroes whom they meet with in the woods ; 

 and they are even said to assault the ele]ihants with the 

 Siime weapons, and drive them out of their districts. 

 These statements, if true, probably relate to the gorilla, 

 as even the adult male chimpanzee is said to fly from 

 a man. In their sexual habits they are described as 

 being very disgusting; and, according to Dr. Savage 

 (an American missionary to whom we are indebted for 

 tlie actual discovery of a second species of Troglo- 

 dijtes), the Negroes have a tradition that the chimpan- 

 zees once belonged to the human race, but that they 

 were expelled from society on account of the incorrigible 

 depravity of their habits. 



The chimpanzee does not appear to have been 

 clearly known to the ancients, and yet in a very old 

 Carthaginian voyage, the Periplus of Hanno, we have 

 a curious account of an animal which can only be 

 leferred to this or the following species. At least 

 live hundred years before our era the Carthaginians 

 iippointed Hanno, one of their admirals, to sail with a 

 large fleet through the Straits of Gibraltar, for the pur- 

 pose of founding Carthaginian colonies along the African 

 coast. According to the journal of this voyage, wliich 

 has come down to us, the admiral set sail with no less 

 than thirty thousand colonists of both sexes, and coast- 

 ing along the western shores of Africa, succeeded in 

 establishing numerous colonies at different places. He 

 describes the coast and its inhabitants, and evidently 

 entered the Gulf of Guinea, in which he sailed until he 

 reached a bay called- by his interpreters the Southern 

 Horn. " In the bottom of this bay," says the Cartha- 

 ginian admiral, " (here was an island similar to the one 

 previously described (in his voyage) ; this contained a 

 lake, and in this lake there was another island inha- 

 bited by wild men. The women were most numerous ; 

 they were entirely covered with hair, and our inter- 

 preters called them Gorilloi. We pursued tliem, but 

 could not capture the men ; they all escaped us by their 

 great activity, as they climbed the rocks and defended 

 themselves by throwing stones at us. We only caught 

 three women, who resisted by biting and scratching 

 their conductors, and we were forced to kill them. We 

 skinned them, and brought back their skins to Car- 

 tilage." These skins were placed in the temj)le of 

 Astarte in Carthage, where they remained until the 

 taking of that city in tlie year 14G B.C., as stated by 

 Pliny, who, however, only mentions two of them, and 

 changes the name of these wild men into Gorgones. 

 The Gorilloi of Hanno, the Troglodytes, Satyrs, and 

 other fantastic creatures described by the ancient na- 

 luialists, were regarded by them as monstrous varieties 

 of the human race, and the idea of their existence was 

 \irobably derived from the imperfect accounts given 

 by travellers of the Anthropoid apes. Those notions 

 continued to prevail throughout the middle ages, and it 

 was not until a very recent period that they were 

 replaced by more correct views. Thus, even Linnaeus 

 describes a Homo Troglodytes, as a second species of 

 man, in which he evidently confuses together the older 

 narratives relating to both the chimpanzee and orang- 

 outan ; just as, in his genus Simia, he combines these 

 two species under the common name of S. Sati/riis. 

 Vol. I. 



It was not until the latter part of the sixteenth 

 century, when the intercourse of Europeans with the 

 west coast of Africa became more extended, that the 

 accounts of travellers began to furnish more reliable 

 information upon these large apes, although the carlii r 

 of these accounts are for the most part mixed up with 

 fabulous narratives obtained from the Negroes. Andrew 

 Battel, an English sailor, who was taken prisoner by 

 the Portuguese in 1589, and resided for several years 

 in Angola, mentions " two kinds of monsters," as he 

 calls them, which inhabit the woods of that country ; 

 of these the largest, which, he says, is of gigantic height, 

 is called Pongo, and the other Enjocho, by the natives. 

 The former is most probably identical with the newly- 

 discovered gorilla ; the enjocko of Battel is, no doubt, 

 tlie same as our chimpanzee ; and we find from later 

 sources that in the district of the Gaboon, the Negroes 

 give the name of iV TVcAei/o to the chimpanzee. De 

 Laval, a Frenchman, who published his travels in 1019, 

 mentions the occurrence of these animals in Sierra 

 Leone, where he says they are called Barris, and adds 

 that they may bo trained " to perform aU the duties of a 

 household servant." He states that they " generally 

 walk upright, upon the hind feet only ; they will pound 

 grain or any other substance in a mortar, go to the well, 

 fill their water-jars and carry them home on their heads ; 

 but if some person be not at hand to relieve them from 

 their burden on their arrival, they let the jar fall, and 

 begin to cry on seeing it broken." Jobson also describes 

 an ape of five feet in height, called by the Negroes 

 Qiioja Voraii, which, according to hiui, can be taught 

 to fetch water and to perform other household offices. 

 De la Brosse, in his " Voyage to the Coast of Angola," 

 published in 1738, refers to the species under the name 

 of Quimpeze, but seems to have mixed up the chim- 

 panzee and the gorilla, for he describes the animals as 

 attaining a height of six or seven feet. He confirms 

 many of the facts narrated by preceding travellers, and 

 makes especial mention of the abduction of Negresses 

 by these creatures, a habit which is so commonly 

 ascribed both to the large apes and the baboons, stating 

 that he was acquainted with a woman at Loango who 

 lived three years amongst these animals. This account 

 of the predilection of the chimpanzees for human con- 

 cubines is confirmed, from hearsay, by Smith, who 

 visited the coast of Guinea in 1744, and who says the 

 animal is there called Mandrill ; in fact, it appears 

 that the name of Drill, commonly applied to one of 

 the large baboons, really belongs to the chimpanzee, 

 and that it is the root of the Greek word Gorilloi, given 

 by Hanno as the name of his wild men. These naria- 

 tives, with the exception of Battel's, probably refer 

 both to the pongo and the enjocko of the latter. 



The first specimen of the chimpanzee seen in Europe 

 was a young living individual, which was brought to 

 Holland towards the end of the seventeenth century. 

 This specimen, which was from Angola, was described 

 by Tulpius, who, however, confounded it with the 

 orang-outan, in which, as already stated, he was fol- 

 lowed by Linnteus. Buffon, also, who had the oppor- 

 tunity of examining at least one living specimen of the 

 chimpanzee, did not recognize its distinctness from the 

 orang. It was first described under the name of Simia 



C 



