OLD STORIES ABOUT GORILLAS. 
7 
told, and indeed some of tliem are as old as the days of the Carthaginians. For instance, Hanno, 
a Carthaginian, was ordered to sail on a voyage of discovery round Africa some centuries before 
Christ, the exact date not being fixed ; and he sailed and rowed in his galleys out of the present 
Straits of Gibraltar, and coasted southwards until he came to the great bay, probably somewhere about 
the Gaboon River, near the equator, in Western Africa. It is stated in the history of his voyage: — 
“ On the third day, having sailed from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay 
called the Horn of the South. In the recess there was an island like the first, having a lake, and 
in this there was another island full of wild men. But much the greater part of them were women 
with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called Gorillas. But, pursuing them, we were not able 
to take the men; they all escaped, being able to climb the precipices, and defended themselves with 
pieces of rock. But these women (female Gorillas), who bit and scratched those who led them, 
were not willing to follow. However, having killed them, we ilayed them, and conveyed the skins 
to Carthage, for we did not sail any further, as provisions began to fail.” 
Probably the streams of fire were a part of a volcanic eruption. Written in the Periplus or 
voyage of Hanno this story is thoroughly African, and might have been the model upon which 
hundreds of later ones have been formed, for it is a combination of the novel in nature, and of what 
is true and false. It is curious that a commander of so civilised an expedition, and a man whose 
eyes had been accustomed to the grace of Grecian statuary and to the beauty of his own country- 
women, should have mistaken a Gorilla for one of the fair sex ; and, moreover, it is possible that 
from the mounting of the rocks, and the flinging of stones by the males, the whole were Baboons. 
Nevertheless this is the oldest record of the name which is associated with the most interesting of 
modern discoveries, and it accounts for many stories which were kept floating in the thoughts of 
successive generations of travellers. 
Gradually the truth came forth, but not until many Europeans had wandered in Gorilla 
Land. One Andrew Bartlett was an English sailor, who got caught by the Portuguese for 
some reason or other, and was kept a prisoner in Angola, which is situated nearly ten degrees 
south of the line, and near the great virgin forests, which are the haunts of the Gorilla and 
Chimpanzee, and his “strange adventures ” were published in 1625, by Purchas, in “His Pil- 
grimages.” 
Battel speaks of two monsters which excited the fears of the natives. “ The greatest is called 
Pongo, in their language, and the lesser is called Eiigeco. This Pongo is in all proportion like a 
man, but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man : for he is very tall and hath a man’s 
face, hollow eyed, with long haire upon his brows. His bodie is full of liaire, but not very thick, 
and it is of a brownish colour. He difieretli not from man but in his legs, for they have no calfe. 
He goeth always upon his legs, and carrietli his hands clasped on the nape of his necke, when he 
goeth upon the ground. They sleepe in the trees, and build shelter for the raine. They feed upon 
the fruit that they find in the woods, and upon nuts, for they eat no kind of flesh. They cannot 
speak, and have no understanding more than a beast. The people of the eountrie, when they travaile 
in the woods, make fires when they sleepe in the night : and in the morning when they are gone, 
Pongo will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out, for they have no understanding to lay the 
wood together. They goe many together and kill many negroes that travaile in the woods. Many 
times they fall upon elephants which come to feed where they may be, and so beat them with their 
clubbed fists and pieces of wood that they will runne roaring away from them. These Pongos are never 
taken alive, because they arc so strong ten men cannot hold one of them ; but they take many of their 
young ones with poisoned arrows. The young Pongo hangeth on its mother’s belly with its hands 
clasped about her, so that when any of the country people kill the females, they take the young which 
hangs fast upon his mother. When they die amongst themselves, they cover the dead with great 
heaps of boughs and wood, which are commonly found in the forests.” 
The Pongo appears to be the Gorilla, and Battel tells much truth about it, mixed up with absurd 
fiction, whilst the Engeco, or as it is called by the natives of the Gaboon, the enche-eko , is the 
Chimpanzee. 
Early in this century, in 1819, Bowdich says, in a description of a mission from Cape Coast 
Castle to Ashantee, “ that the favourite and most extraordinary subject of conversation when in the 
