Introduction 



in detail of skull proportions, in not having quite such long 

 canine teeth, in greater size of body and a greater growth 

 and length of hair on the head. 



The first white man intelHgently to appreciate the existence 

 of the chimpanzi and gorilla in West-central Africa, and 

 to distinguish between them, was the English sailor, Andrew 

 Battel of Essex, who was stranded on the Angola coast about 

 1592 and carried away into Luango across the lower Congo 

 by an army of raiding negroes. He reported the existence 

 of two kinds of man-like apes in that region : the " Engeco " 

 (chimpanzi) and the " Pongo " (goriUa), names which still 

 persist in that locality. His writings were published about 

 1613, but little heed was paid to these details for two hundred 

 and fifty years. 



The existence and characters of the chimpanzi were 

 realised in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century, 

 probably first by a naturalist in Wiirtemberg. But the 

 name " chimpanzi " we owe to the Portuguese, who derived 

 it from the Bantu language of the northern Luango country 

 where it is heard as chi-mpenze, chi-mpanzi to the present 

 day. One of the several Hannos of Carthaginian history or 

 legend apparently discovered the chimpanzi of the Sierra 

 Leone coastlands some five hundred years before the Christian 

 era, at the conclusion of an exploring voyage along the North- 

 west Coast of Africa. But the skins brought back to Carthage 

 were ascribed to " wild men," and the episode was forgotten 

 or passed over till the discovery of the gorilla in the mid- 

 nineteenth century. Then it was erroneously assumed that 

 this Hanno had pushed his exploring voyages as far east as 

 the Cameroons, and his name for the chimpanzi (" gorilla " 

 — very likely derived from Fula or Wolof words meaning 



xxii 



