TIIE KOOLO-KAMBA. 
43 
the singular cry of the Ape I was after. ‘Koola-koolo! koola-koolo l* * it said several times. Ganibo and 
I raised our eyes, and saw, high up on a tree-branch, a large Ape. We both fired at once, and the next 
moment the poor beast fell to the ground with a heavy crash. I rushed up, anxious to see if, indeed, 
I had a new animal. 1 saw in a moment that it was neither a Nsehiego Mbouve*, nor a Chimpanzee, 
nor a Gorilla. Again I had a happy day — marked for ever with red ink in my calendar. We at once 
disembowelled the animal, which was a male. 1 found in its intestines only vegetable matter and 
remains. The skin and skeleton were taken into camp, where I cured the former with arsenic 
sufficiently to take it into Obindji. The animal was a full-grown male, four feet three inches high, and 
was less powerfully built than the male Gorilla, but as powerful as either the Chimpanzee or Nsehiego 
Mbouve. When it was brought into Obindji, all the people, and even Quenqueza, at once exclaimed, 
‘That is a Koolo-Kamba.’ Then I asked them about the other Apes I already knew, but for these 
they had other names, and did not at all confound the species. For all these reasons I was assured 
that my prize was indeed a new animal j a variety, at least, of those before known. The Koolo- 
Kamba has several distinctive marks : a very round head, whiskers running quite round the face and 
below the chin; the face is round, the cheek-bones prominent, the eyes sunken, and the jaws not very 
prominent, less so than in any of the A]>es. The hair is black and long on the arm, which was, 
however, partly bare. The Koolo is the Ape, of all the great Apes now known, which most nearly 
approaches man in the structure of its head; for the capacity of the cranium is somewhat greater, in 
proportion to the animars size, than in either the Gorilla or the Nsehiego Mbouve. Of its habits these 
people could tell me nothing, except that farther in the interior it was found more frequently, and that 
it was like the Gorilla, very shy and hard of approach.” They are rare animals, and Du Chaillu met 
with this one only ; it was as large as a female Gorilla, and from its structure was evidently a 
great climber. 
One was killed and sent over to Paris some few years since, and its anatomy forms a great treatise 
by the distinguished men whose names are appended to its title, T roglodytes Aubnyt. 
They agree with Du Chaillu in his slight notice of its shape and peculiarities to a certain extent, 
and in his notice that the arms reach below the knee, that the shoulders are broad, and that the 
ears are large, but they give, some very interesting descriptions of its strange characteristics. It has 
many points of resemblance with the Gorilla and many with the Nscliiego, but it has others which 
cause it to be like the common Chimpanzee, and which show some likeness to the great Baboon. It 
tills up the gap in the animal scale between the Nsehiego and Gorilla on the one hand, and the true 
Chimpanzee {Troglodytes niger) on the other; and were it not in existence, it would be necessary to 
divide these Apes into two groups or genera, to make, in fact, a genus Gorilla and a genus 
Troglodytes, the first to contain the Gorilla and Nsehiego, and the last the Chimpanzee. They are all 
therefore linked together in one genus by it, that of Troglodytes . 
The shape and the peculiar anatomy of the Koolo-Kamba are not simply curious and only 
interesting to those who study dry bones, for they have to do with its habits and mode of life, and their 
examination is full of instruction to those who like to understand causes and effects, and design in 
Nature. Much has been explained in the chapter on the Gorilla regarding the different parts of the 
body, and if that information is considered there will be no difficulty in comprehending all about the 
Ape now under consideration. 
The shape of the body as a whole is admirably adapted for great powers of climbing and of 
exertion of the limbs, and these last are adapted for the same end in a manner surpassing the great 
Apes already described. But, moreover, the body is peculiarly suited, not for maintaining or often 
using the upright portion or the legs, but for going on all-fours, like a Baboon or Dog. Doubtless the 
Gorilla and the Nsehiego d > often stand up for a. short time, and their construction points at this 
being very possible, as their frame has a combination of structures for doing this and for climbing. 
Now the Koolo-Kamba must differ from them in its structure, for it requires those which enable it to 
invariably go on all-fours, and yet to climb better than the others. 
It never wants to sit down, except with its knees drawn up to its nose, and it squats on its 
hauncli-bones (the tuberosities of the haunch — of the “ischium” bone). 
* Koolo is the cry, and Kambe means “to say.” 
