MR., MRS., AND MASTER GORILLA. 79 
The habitat of the gorilla has been unduly limited to 
the left banks of the Gaboon and Fernao Vaz rivers, 
and to the lands lying between north latitude 2°, and 
south latitude 2°, — in fact, to the immediate vicinity of 
the equator. The late Count Lavradio informed me 
that he had heard of it on the banks of the lower 
Congo River (south latitude 9°), and the “ Soko,” which 
Dr. Livingstone identifies with the Gorilla, extends to 
the Lualaba or Upper Congo, in the regions immediately 
west of the Tanganyika Lake. His friends have sug- 
gested that the “ Soko ” might have been a chimpanzee, 
but the old traveller was, methinks, far above making 
the mistake. The Yorubans at once recognize the 
picture ; they call the anthropoid “ Naki ; ” and they 
declare that, when it seizes a man, it tears the fingers 
asunder. So M. clu Chaillu (chapter vi.) mentions, in 
the Mpongwe report, that the Njina tears off’ the toe- 
nails and the finger-nails of his human captives. We 
should not believe so scandalous an assertion without 
detailed proof ; it is hardly fair to make the innocent 
biped as needlessly cruel as man. It is well known to 
the natives of the Old Calabar River by the name of 
“Onion.” In 1860, the brothers Jules and Ambroise 
Poncet travelled with Dr. Peney to Ab Kiika, the last 
of their stations near the head of the Luta Nzige 
(Albert Nyanza) Lake, and Dr. Peney “ brought back 
the hand of the first gorilla which had been heard of ” 
(“Ocean Highways,” p. 482 — February, 1874). The 
German Expedition (1873) reports Chicambo to be a 
gorilla country ; that the anthropoid is found one day’s 
journey from the Coast, and that the agent of that 
station has killed five with his own hand. Mr. 
Thompson of Sherbro (“Palm Land,” chap, xiii.) says 
of the chimpanzee : “ Some have been seen as tall as a 
man, from five to seven feet high, and very powerful.” 
This is evidently the Njfna, the only known anthropoid 
that attains tall human stature ; and from the rest of 
the passage, * it is clear that he has confounded ■ the 
chimpanzee with the Nchfgo-mpolo. 
* See chap. ii. 
