Introduction 



'nineties, Grenfell photographed a very large chimpanzi 

 derived from the north side of Stanley Pool. It must have 

 been about five feet three inches in height. He also recorded 

 subsequently in notes the existence of the chimpanzi in the 

 regions north of the Upper Congo, but never to the south of 

 that river. 



In 1890, Stanley, on his return from the Emin Pasha 

 Relief Expedition, expressed his belief to the present writer 

 that there was a form of gorilla in the dense forests of North- 

 east Congoland ; so that when I went out to Uganda in 

 1899, and crossed the Semliki into the Congo Forest in 1900, 

 I made inquiries of the Belgian officials, who thought them 

 most appropriate ; for they actually had in their possession 

 photographs of a gorilla killed in the vicinity of Avakubi 

 on the Ituri River. 



Early in the twentieth century (1902, 1903 ?) Mr. Oscar 

 Beringer (an engineer, I believe, connected with the building 

 of the German railway to Tanganyika) penetrated the Kivu 

 region north of Tanganyika, and in the vicinity of the Virunga 

 volcanoes obtained the magnificent specimen of the Eastern 

 gorilla now named after him. 



In 1905, George Grenfell stated in one of his private letters 

 that in the district of Bwela, north of the Upper Congo and 

 near the River Motima, he came across a group of gorillas 

 seated in a tree, and that he killed one a little over four feet in 

 height. (The incident is further described in my two volumes 

 on " George Grenfell and the Congo.") Grenfell knew quite 

 enough about the anthropoid apes to distinguish between 

 the goriUa and the chimpanzi ; and from other scattered 

 notes in his papers I gather that he considered there was a 

 gorilla district north of the Upper Congo from the Mongala 



xxiv 



