APES 
is still very limited, although there is no reasonable doub 
that this animal was discovered two thousand three 
hundred years ago. It may appear strange that this large 
and formidable beast should have remained so little known 
during that long period, but when we consider the danger 
to which the traveller must be exposed in his attempts to 
penetrate into the country inhabited by this monster and 
the little chance held out of his return, together with the 
small inducement to risk so much in travelling in these 
regions, the absence of any reliable information on the 
subject is, in a measure, accounted for. We are, therefore, 
obliged to rely either on the statements which have been 
made from time to time by travellers who have visited the 
country or on what the natives who reside there have told 
the explorers. It must be borne in mind that it would be 
as unjust not to accept statements as it would be unwise to 
adopt and to readily believe some of them. It, therefore, 
becomes necessary to carefully consider, from what we do 
know, the probability of the truth of the various travellers’ 
tales that have been told. By the natives it is stated 
(and history agrees) that these animals always attack man 
and invariably carry off women and children, and that 
individuals of our species have been obtained by the apes 
and kept among them for years. Such accounts have been 
received from the simple-minded natives, whose honesty 
and truthfulness are sometimes in strong and painful 
contrast to the misrepresentations of the more highly 
educated, enlightened, and less humble. Certain it is 
that the natives of the country entertain the greatest 
fear and dread of these creatures. Our surprise at this is 
at once removed by an examination of the animal. Its 
power must be prodigious ; its fierce and brutal aspects 
render it at once the most repulsive of brutes ; the 
enormous size of its arms, its grasping power, the large 
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