CLASS MAMMALIA.

The World of Monkeys, and its Division into great Groups—Distinction between the Old World and New World Monkeys—Classification of Monkeys—THEGORILLA, Ancient and Modern Stories about it—Investigations of Savage and Du Chaillu—General Description—The Head, Brain, Teeth, Taste, Smell, and Voice—The Air Sacs, and Ear—The Limbs and Muscles—Method of Climbing—Diet—Hunting the Gorilla—Attempts to Capture Alive—A Tame Gorilla

IF one of each kind of the Apes and Monkeys which are now living on the globe could be collected and placed in a large zoological garden, and if those which lived in former ages, and whose skeletons have been discovered by geologists, could be brought to life, and added to the whole, they would certainly form a very amusing and remarkable assemblage. What endless fun there would be, what scamperings, skirmishes, and quarrels would take place; how they would grin, chatter, and pull tails all the live-long day; and as evening began, how some, which had been quiet spectators before, would commence howling, and how others would rush about amongst their tired and sleepy companions, with noiseless bounds until the return of daylight!

If each of these representative Monkeys could give an account of itself, whence it had come, how it lived in its native forests and woods, and what it did with itself all day, a most interesting andnovel Natural History book could be compiled, for only the histories of a few have been written, and they are by no means always veracious. They would have come from Asia and many of its islands, from Africa, from South America, and the Isthmus to the north, and Europe would have sent one from the rocks of Gibraltar; and yet, unless those of the same country had been properly introduced, either by Dame Nature or by the chapter of accidents incident to such a very unlikely meeting as we are imagining, they would not know many of their fellows. They are exclusive in their habits, and their particular parks and forests are limited in extent, and sometimes very much so. Of course, there are some exceptions, and many kinds which roam over large countries, and are even found in different islands, have gained the superior intelligence and the ready affability and easiness of intercourse characteristic of the cosmopolitan and traveller. Every kind of temper and capacity would be shown; the Gorillas would probably be shy and cross, the Chimpanzees lively and kind, the Baboons grumpy, the Spider Monkeys restless, and most of the Macaques impudent and cunning—the result of a knowledge of Apes and of many Monkeys. There would be every shade of colour, and of shape and size; there would be many without tails, some with stumps, and others with long tails of no great use except to afford temptation to the mischievous; and not a few with fine large ones useful in the extreme, by acting as a fifth limb. Many would have very human faces and sharp eyes, others would look more like dogs, and fierce enough, and there would be every variety of posture. Some would sit very well, others would go on all-fours, and there would be others swinging with their long and strong arms, and making tremendous jumps and bounds assisted in some by the prehensile tail. Some would want one kind of fruit, and others different kinds of vegetables, but only two or three tiny little ones would care much about grubs and eggs. All would have the very best possible limbs for climbing, grasping, picking, and stealing, and all would have good hands, that is to say, fingers and thumbs and wrists, in front, and foot-hands, that is to say, feet with a great thumb-like toe behind. In a general sense they would all be four-handed or Quadrumanous, and this peculiarity would distinguish them from any interlopers who might have got into the assemblage unasked.

AMERICAN MONKEY, WITH PREHENSILE TAIL.

It may be doubted whether the most scientific of the scientific could do much in the way of science at first with such varied and amusing creatures before him; but the mind will attempt to compare and notice differences under all sorts of circumstances, and therefore some general truths wouldpossibly be got at amidst all the noisy debates, divisions, and cheers and counter-cheers of this Apes’ Parliament. There would be clearly two sides to this house of representatives, the Americans and the Old World-ites, and the most uncritical observer would separate them. It never entered into the mind of a Monkey of the Old World to have a tail which would be as useful as another leg and hand, and as manageable as if it had an eye at its tip—that is an invention of Dame Nature in the American tropics, and is an evident improvement. Now this tail is visible enough, and so is another American peculiarity. The Monkeys there have a broad end to the nose, and the openings of the nostrils look outwards, being separated by a thick gristle; but those of the Old World have a thin gristle in the same place, and the nostrils are not wide apart but open in front, more or less like those of men and dogs. Here are, then, two “parties,” those with nostrils wide apart with a wide and thick gristle—“broad noses,” called in scientific language “Platyrhines”[1]; and those with the nostrils “looking downward,” or “Catarhines.”[2]

ONE OF THE ANTHROPOMORPHA—THE CHIMPANZEE.

The great American section, or that of the broad-noses, is split up to a certain extent, for all have not long prehensile tails, those of some being short; and others have them feeble in strength and almost brushy with fur. Here are, then, the means of readily knowing one set from another, so far as these far travelled Monkeys are concerned.

The Old World section, with its close and downward-looking nostrils, at first sight appears very united, but after a little noticing there seem to be many different groups in it. Firstly, the commonest kinds make up for the absence of a clinging tail, such as their American cousins have, by having something which the Transatlantics would be glad of, namely, cheek pouches—comfortable receptacles for nuts and such delicacies within the mouth, where food can be kept as in a cupboard, until itis required, or can be enjoyed in safety. These are the valuable properties of many of the smaller African tribes. Then they also have, in the absence of soft clothes and comfortable chairs to sit upon, fur or hair and a natural hardness or “callosity,” or seat, which does not wear out, and which is often strangely coloured. Another group has no cheek pouches, but it possesses the callosities, and these less favoured creatures come mainly from Asia and the great islands, and only a few from Africa.

Finally, the most important group of the section consists of the large Apes, with neither tails, callosities, nor cheek pouches, but having very man-like features; for instance, the great Troglodytes, Chimpanzees, and Orangs, the first two from Africa, and the last from the great Asiatic islands and the mainland.

ONE OF THE CYNOMORPHA—THE BABOON.

These tribes could be, with more study (especially if the merry company were broken up by the anatomist taking them one by one and dissecting them), divided over and over again, and separated into kinds or species, which would not, however, always tally with the corresponding arrangement of the naturalist, who would go by the skin and the outside of the animals.

One thing would be quite clear to every one, and that is that some of the creatures greatly resemble man at first sight, and that although this likeness diminishes with study, still there is a group, which deserves the title of the “man-shaped.” Others form a group which go usually on all fours, looking like dogs, more or less, and they are the “dog-shaped,” but they of course retain the more or less man-like peculiarities which characterise the whole of the Monkeys.

Hence, after all these divisions and differences and resemblances have been mastered, it would be found that the noisy assemblage could be arranged as follows:—

1.—CATARHINES.—Old World Monkeys, man-shaped and dog-shaped.

2.—PLATYRHINES.—New World Monkeys.

The first section, theCatarhines, may be divided into the man-shaped, or in the Greek theAnthropomorpha, and the dog-shaped, or theCynomorpha.

Or they may be arranged as those, with: 1, cheek pouches and callosities, for instance, the Baboons; 2, those with callosities only, the Monkeys; and 3, those without either, and without a tail, the Apes.

The second section, or thePlatyrhines, may be divided into those: 1, with prehensile tails; and 2, those with the tails not prehensile; and 3, those whose tail is furry.

This great array of manikins (whence they get their name of Monkey—the wordhomunculus, “a sorry little fellow,” having possibly something to do with it) is formed by creatures next to man, the highest in the scale of animals. They could be very readily distinguished from all others, were it not for the existence of a group of beings which resemble them in some particulars. These are the next lowest in the scale, and they have thumbs on the hands and thumb-toes on the feet, but their fur is woolly, and they are cat-like in shape. They are called the Lemurs, or by some zoologists “Half Apes.” These Lemurs only resemble in a slight degree some of the Monkeys of the New World, but they are more like them than any other animals, and therefore are classified with them.

GROUP OF LEMURS. (From theTransactions of the Zoological Society.)

The order of beings to which these various creatures belong is known by the name of “Primates,” which implies the rank they hold in the scale of creation. Man stands first, very distinct in his intellectual powers and spiritual gifts from the most intelligent of the Quadrumana and as much superior to them in his construction. Then comes the world of Monkeys, the “man-shaped” at the head, and the little marmosets, with furry tails, at the bottom of the array, and linked on to these are the Half Apes or Lemurs. They all form a great order of the animal kingdom which stands first and at the head of all other orders of the animal world.

But what would the old Monkeys whose bones have been dug out of strata which are older than the Himalayan mountains and the Alps say could they visit such a collection as that suggested? They would recognise their fellow-monkeys, but would look upon them as pigmies in size. They would be few in number, for though Monkeys go the way of all flesh very rapidly, skeletons of them are very rarely found, so rarely indeed that many Indians believe that the other Monkeys bury them. The fact is, that there are plenty of Jackals, to say nothing of birds of prey, ready to snap up a dead, dying, or invalid Ape, and to turn its protoplasm into their own. Some few tumble into holes, and may be preserved there, and probably that was how the old bones were hidden up. The old kinds resembled the new more or less, but for the most part those which have been carefully examinedwere larger than the corresponding modern species. They were as great Apes in their nature as are the present, and had this advantage, that their roaming ground was wider, for they lived in Europe as well as in the countries where their modern representatives are found. Nevertheless, even in those old days the Catarhines were kept to the Old World, and the Platyrhines enlivened the American forests alone.

1. FOOT AND HAND OF A MONKEY. 2. A. CATARHINE MONKEY. 3. A. PLATYRHINE MONKEY. 4. MONKEY WITH CHEEK POUCHES.

In the great order of the Primates, after man, stand the man-shaped or anthropomorphous[3]Apes, the Great Tail-less. They are inhabitants of equatorial Africa, and of the large Asiatic islands and the adjacent mainland, and first and foremost amongst them is

Africa, to the south of the Great Desert, has always been a country of wonders, and highly attractive to imaginative and restless men; and its dark population, so ignorant and superstitious, has, from its love of the marvellous, shadowed the truth with much mystery. Hence, travellers in those tropical regions, which are so fatal to Europeans, have from the earliest times told of the man-like creatures they had heard of and sometimes seen; and they have associated them in the equatorial part of the continent with human dwarfs, pigmies, and monsters. For centuries these degraded human races have been sought after, and now whilst it is admitted that dwarfed men exist, it has come to light that most of the stories which led to the belief in their hideous associates were derived from the existence of large man-like Apes—creatures of dread to the natives—whose traditions are full of credulous anecdotes about them. Hidden in the recesses of vast forests, where the silence of nature is intense, and moving with great activity, where men can hardly follow, these animals acquired most doubtful reputations, and their ugly personal appearance, so suggestive of violence, was magnified in every way in the eyes of the timid natives.

So dreaded were the Apes, and so environed were they with a superstitious mystery, that Europeans had travelled and traded close to their haunts for centuries before one of them was seen by any other eyes than those of the timid negroes. Many stories about them had long beentold, and indeed some of them 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 Strait 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 flayed 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 thePeriplusor 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 countrywomen, 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 Pilgrimages.”

Battel speaks of two monsters which excited the fears of the natives. “The greatest is calledPongo, in their language, and the lesser is calledEngeco. 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 haire, but not very thick, and it is of a brownish colour. He differeth not from man but in his legs, for they have no calfe. He goeth always upon his legs, and carrieth 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 countrie, 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 are 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, theenche-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 Gaboon River was theIngena. This is an animal like the Orang-Utan, but much exceeding it in size, being five feet high and four feet across the shoulders. Its paw was said to be even more disproportioned in its breadth, and one blow of it is said to be fatal. It is commonly seen by the natives when they travel to Kaybe, lurking in the bush to destroy passengers, not to eat them, for it feeds principally on wild honey which abounds.”

MALE GORILLA.

Sometimes, the natives assert, when a company of villagers are moving rapidly through the shades of the forest, they become aware of the presence of the formidable Ape by the suddendisappearance of one of their companions, who is hoisted up into a tree, uttering, perhaps, only a short choking sob. In a few minutes he falls to the ground a strangled corpse, for the animal, watching his opportunity, has let down his huge hind-hand and seized the passing negro by the neck with a vice-like grip, and has drawn him up into the branches, dropping him when life and struggling have ceased.

FEMALE GORILLA AND YOUNG. (From theTransactions of the Zoological Society of London.)

The missionaries, when they were established in the Gaboon region, found that all along the coast the Gorillas were believed by the natives to be human beings, members of their own race degenerated. Some natives who had been a little civilised, and who thought a little more than the rest, did not acknowledge this relationship, but considered them as embodied spirits, the belief in the transmigration of souls being prevalent. They said that theenche-eko, or Chimpanzee, has the spirit of acoastman, being less fierce and more intelligent than theenge-ena, or Gorilla, which has that of abushman. The majority, however, fully believed them to be men, and seemed to be unaffected by the arguments offered to disprove this fancy; and this was especially true of the tribes in the immediate vicinity of the locality. They believed them to be literally wild men of the woods. Nevertheless, they were eaten when they could be got, and their flesh, with that of the Chimpanzee and other Monkeys, formed and still forms a prominent place in the bill of fare.

Impressed thus with a belief in their kinship and of their ferocity, it was not surprising that live Gorillas could not be obtained by European travellers. Even a bold and skilful hunter of the elephant, when pressed to bring in one, declared he would not do it for a mountain of gold.

In 1847 the first sight of a part of a Gorilla was obtained by an American missionary; it was a skull, and its shape struck him as being so extraordinary that he believed the natives were correct in attributing it to the much-talked-of Ape of whose ferocity and strength he had heard so much.Collecting others, he at last handed them over to a fellow labourer, Dr. Savage, who possessed much anatomical knowledge. Every attempt was made to obtain even a dead Gorilla, but without satisfactory results. Savage lived for years in the neighbourhood of the Gaboon river, and not only gradually accumulated a fine collection of the bones of the great Ape, which he at first thought was the Orang-Utan, and which he subsequently described as the Gorilla, but also put together a history of its habits and aspect as gleaned from the natives. He was in the heart of Gorilla Land, which may be said to extend from ten to fifteen degrees of latitude on each side of the equator. It is bounded by the sea on the west, and extends to an unknown distance to the east, being watered by the Gaboon, Danger, and Fernandez Vas rivers. Mountainous far from the coast, and very undulating everywhere, it consists of dense forest, wild jungle, and open places. Traversed as this country is by navigable rivers which are visited by traders, it struck this observer that it was indeed remarkable that the Gorilla should have been so unknown to civilised men; but he was soon impressed with the dread the natives had of it, and also with the fact that it sought the remoter parts of the neighbouring woods. From the descriptions of the natives, who never attempted to interfere with the Gorilla except in self-defence, its height is above five feet, and it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders. It is covered with coarse black hair, which greatly resembles that of the Chimpanzee; with age it becomes grey, and this fact has given rise to the report that there are more kinds than one. Resembling a huge Ape in shape, with a great body, comparatively short legs with large hind-thumbs, its bulk is considerable, and its arms, reaching further down than in man, enable it to grasp and climb well. It does not possess a tail, and the head has a wide and long black face, a very deep cheek, great brows over the deeply-seated hazel eyes, a flat nose, and a wide mouth with very strong teeth. The top of the head has a crest of longish hair, and elsewhere it is exceedingly thick and short. The belly is very large. From inquiry he ascertained that when walking, their gait is shuffling, and the body, which is never upright like that of man, moves from side to side in going along. Usually it walks by resting the hands on the ground and then bringing the legs between them, and swinging the body forward. They live in bands, and the females generally exceed the males in number. They are exceedingly ferocious, never running away from man, and the few that have been captured were killed by elephant hunters and native traders as they came suddenly upon them whilst passing through the woods.

FRONT VIEW OF THE SKULL OFTHE GORILLA.

It was said, at this time, by the natives, that the Gorilla makes a sleeping-place like a hammock, by connecting the branches of a sheltered and thickly-leaved part of a tree by means of the long, tough, slender stems of parasitic plants, and lining it with the dried broad fronds of fern, or with long grass. This hammock-like abode may be seen at different heights, from ten to forty feet from the ground, but there is never more than one such nest in a tree. They avoid the abodes of man, but are most commonly seen in the months of September, October, and November, after the negroes have gathered in their outlying rice-crops, and have returned from the “bush” to their valleys. So observed, they are described to be usually in pairs, or if more, the addition consists of a few young ones of different ages and apparently of one family. The Gorilla is not gregarious. The parents may be seen sitting on a branch resting their backs against the tree trunk munching fruit, whilst the young Gorillas are at play, leaping and swinging from branch to branch with hoots or harsh cries of boisterous mirth. This rural felicity, however, has its objectionable sides, for occasionally, if not invariably, the old male, if he be seen in quest of food, is usually armed with a short stick, which the negroes aver to be the weapon with which he attacks his chief enemy the elephant. Not that the elephant directly or intentionally injures the Gorilla, but deriving its subsistence from the same source, the Ape regards the great proboscidian as a hostile intruder. When, therefore, he sees the elephant pulling down and wrenching off the branches of a favourite tree, the Gorilla, stealing along the bough, strikes the sensitive proboscis of the elephant with a violent blow of his club, and drives off the startled giant trumpeting shrillywith pain. In passing from one tree to another the Gorilla is said to walk semi-erect with the aid of his club, but with a waddling and awkward gait; when without a stick, he has been seen to walk as a man, with his hands clasped across the back of his head, instinctively balancing its forward position. If the Gorilla be surprised and approached, whatever the ground may be, he betakes himself on all-fours, dropping the stick, and makes his way very rapidly, with a kind of sidelong gallop, resting on the front knuckles, to the nearest tree. There he meets his pursuer, especially if his family is near and requiring his defence. No negro willingly approaches the tree in which the male Gorilla keeps guard, even with a gun. The experienced negro does not make the attack, but reserves his fire in self-defence. The enmity of the Gorilla to the whole negro race, male and female, is uniformly attested. Thus, when young men of the Gaboon tribe make excursions into the forests in quest of ivory, the enemy they most dread to meet is the Gorilla. If they have come unawares too near him with his family, he does not, like the lion, sulkily retreat, but comes rapidly to the attack, swinging down to the lower branches, and clutching at the nearest foe. The hideous aspect of the animal, with his green eyes flashing with rage, is heightened by the skin over the orbits and eyebrows being drawn rapidly backwards and forwards, with the hair erected, producing a horrible and fiendish scowl. If fired at, and not mortally hit, the Gorilla closes at once upon his assailant, and inflicts most dangerous if not deadly wounds, with his sharp and powerful tusks. The commander of a Bristol trader once saw a negro at the Gaboon frightfully mutilated from the bite of a Gorilla, from which he had recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun barrel bent and partly flattened by a wounded Gorilla in its death struggle.

The strength of the Gorilla is such as to make him a match for a lion, whose strength his own nearly rivals. Over the Leopard, invading the lower branches of his dwelling-place, he will gain an easier victory; and the huge canine teeth, with which only the male Gorilla is furnished, doubtless have been given to him for defending his mate and offspring.

As the appearance and some of the movements of the Gorilla are very man-like, some of the natives consider that the souls of men have entered into their bodies, and hence many apologies are made for some of their tricks and reported doings. Moreover, from this belief some of their skulls are made objects of fetish worship, and are marked with broad stripes of red paint, crossed by a white one. These were the stories told to Savage.

On returning to America, Savage investigated the parts of the skeletons he had obtained, and compared them with those of the Chimpanzee. Owen, in England, having received some corresponding specimens, continued the investigation, and all were agreed in deciding that the Gorilla was a species in itself, differing from the Chimpanzee, but sufficiently like it to be connected with it in a genus. The Gorilla was termedTroglodytes Gorilla, and the Chimpanzee, which will be noticed in the next chapter, kept its name ofTroglodytes niger. The word Troglodytes was very ill chosen, and it does not refer in any way to the nature or habits of the animals. It was taken from τρωγλοδύται, the name of an Ethiopian tribe who dwell in holes or caves. The native name is Ngina.

The descriptions of the habits and anatomy of the Gorilla, fragmentary as they were, excited great interest in the minds of many travellers, and especially in that of Du Chaillu, who left America in 1855, determined to explore Gorilla Land, and to obtain some of the great Apes, dead or alive.

He first met with the Gorilla amongst some beautiful scenery, near the Sierra del Crystal, at the head waters of the Ntambounay, a stream which runs into the Muni or Danger River. Close to some rapids down which the torrent was rushing with great velocity amongst huge boulders, and sending its spray up to the tops of the highest trees of the banks, was a deserted village, and amongst its ruins were some broken-down sugar-canes. Here and there the canes had been taken down, and torn up by the roots, and they were lying about in fragments, which had evidently been chewed. He writes:—“I knew that there were fresh tracks of the Gorilla, and joy filled my heart; they (the native hunters) now looked at each other in silence, and muttered,Nguyla, which is as much as to say in Nepongwe,Ngina, or as we say, Gorilla. We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints of the so-long desired animal. It was the first time I had ever seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescribable. Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face that monster of whose ferocity, strength, and cunning, the natives had told me so much; an animal scarce known to the civilised world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the Gorilla, and my feelings were excited to a painful degree. By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been several Gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow them. The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a good escort of two or three men to take care of them, and reassure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully at our guns, for the Gorilla gives you no time to re-load, and woe to him whom he attacks. We were armed to the teeth. My men were remarkably silent, as if they were going on an expedition of more than usual risk; for the male Gorilla is literally king of the African forest. He and the crested lion of Mount Atlas are the two fiercest and strongest beasts of the continent. The lion of South Africa cannot compare with either for strength or courage. I knew that we were about to pit ourselves against an animal which even the leopard of these mountains fears, and which perhaps has driven the lion out of his territory; for the king of beasts so numerous elsewhere in Africa is never met in the land of the Gorilla. We descended a hill, crossed a stream on a fallen log, and presently approached some huge boulders of granite. Alongside of one lay an immense dead tree, and about this we saw many evidences of the very recent presence of the Gorillas. Our approach was very cautious: we were divided into parties. We were to surround the granite block, behind which the animals were supposed to be hiding, and suddenly I was startled by a strange discordant, half-human, devilish cry, and beheld four young Gorillas running toward the deep forests. We fired, but hit nothing. Then we rushed on in pursuit, but they knew the woods better than we. Once I caught a glimpse of one of the animals again, but an intervening tree spoiled my mark, and I did not fire, but ran till we were exhausted, but in vain, and the alert beasts made their escape.” As the hunters sat round their fire in the evening, before going to sleep, the adventure of the day was talked over, and of course some very tough yarns and stories were told about the Gorillas, most of which ought to have put this traveller on his guard, and impressed him that the greater part of the ferocity and the lion-like courage of the new animal were derived from the imaginations of a very superstitious and not over-courageous race of men. They were great believers in witchcraft, and they believed that many men whose names they mentioned, and who are dead, had their spirits now dwelling in Gorillas. However, Du Chaillu, a few days afterwards, started on a hunt which had a more satisfactory termination than the last. He and the rest got on the track of an old male, and suddenly as they were creeping along in silence, which made a heavy breath seem loud and distinct, the woods were at once filled with the tremendous barking roar of the Gorilla. Then the underbush swayed rapidly just a-head, and presently before them stood an immense male. He had gone through the jungle on all-fours, but when he saw the party he raised himself and looked them boldly in the face. “It stood about a dozen yards from us, and was a sight I think I never shall forget. Nearly six feet high (he proved four inches shorter), with immense body, huge chest, and great muscular arms, with fiercely glaring large deep gray eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me like some nightmare vision; there stood before us the king of the African forest. He was not afraid of us. He stood there and beat his breast with his huge fists till it resounded like an immense bass drum, which is their mode of offering defiance; sometimes giving vent to roar after roar. The roar of the Gorilla is the most singular and awful noise heard in these African woods. It begins with a sharp bark like an angry dog, then glides into a deep bass roll, which literally and closely resembles the roll of distant thunder along the sky, for which I have sometimes been tempted to take it when I did not see the animal. His eyes began to flash fiercely, for we stood motionless on the defensive, and the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down, while his powerful fangs were shown as he again sent forth a tremendous roar. He advanced a few steps, then stopped to utter that hideous roar again; advanced again, and finally stopped when at the distance of about six yards from us, and then, just as he began another of his roars, beating his breast with rage, we fired and killed him. With a groan which had something terribly human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward on his face. The body shook convulsively for a few minutes, the limbs moved about in a struggling way, and then all was quiet; death had done its work, and I had leisure to examine the huge body. It proved to be five feet eight inches high, and the muscular development of the arms and breast showed the immense strength it had possessed.”

Du Chaillu once had a capital view of some Gorillas at their meal. News having come thatGorillas had been recently seen in the neighbourhood of a plantation on the Fernandez Vas river, just south of the equator and not far from the West African coast, he got up early and went into it. He writes: “The plantation was a large one, and situated on very broken ground, surrounded by the virgin forest. It was a lovely morning; the sky was almost cloudless, and all around was as still as death, except the slight rustling of the tree tops moved by the gentle land breeze. When I reached the place, I had just to pick my way through the maze of tree-stumps and half-burned logs by the side of a field of cassada.

FAMILY OF GORILLAS.

“I was going quietly along the borders of this when I heard in the grove of plantation trees towards which I was walking a great crushing noise like the breaking of trees. I immediately hid myself behind a bush, and was soon gratified with the sight of a female Gorilla; but before I had time to notice its movements, a second and third emerged from the masses of colossal foliage; at length, no less than four came in view. They were all busily engaged in tearing down the larger trees. One of the females had a young one following her. I had an excellent opportunity of watching the movements of the impish-looking band. The shaggy hides, the protuberant abdomens, the hideous features of these strange creatures, whose forms so nearly resemble man, made up a picture like a vision in a morbid dream. In destroying a tree, they first grasped the base of the stem with one of their feet, and then with their powerful arms pulled it down, a matter of not much difficulty with so loosely-formed a stem as that of the plantain. They then set upon the juicy fruit of the tree at the bases of the leaves, and devoured it with great voracity. While eating, they made a kind of chuckling noise, expressive of contentment. Many trees they destroyed, apparently out of pure mischief. Now and then they stood still and looked around. Once or twice they seemed on the point of starting off in haste, but recovered themselves, and continued their work. Gradually they got nearer to the edge of the dark forest, and finally disappeared.” On the next day he was carrying a light gun, having given his heavy double-barrelled rifle to a boy to carry, when in a deep hollow, flanked with sugar-cane, he saw on the slope opposite to him a gigantic Gorilla standing erect, and walking directly towards him. Pointing his rifle, he turned to look for the boy, but he had seen the Gorilla and bolted forthwith. The huge beast stared at Du Chaillu for about two minutes, and then without uttering any noise moved off to the shade of the forest, running nimbly on his hands and feet.

This running movement is performed principally by the arms, for the animal places the backs of its knuckles on the ground, straightens its elbows, and swings the huge body and short legs so that they come in front. Then the feet support the weight of the body until the knuckles are put on the ground in advance.

Anxious to possess some adult Gorillas, Du Chaillu offered rewards to the native hunters, and on one occasion they brought in three live ones, one being full-grown. This was a large adult female, who was bound hand and foot, and with it was her female child, screaming terribly, and the third was a vigorous young male, who was also tightly bound. The female had been ingeniously secured by the negroes to a strong stick, the wrists being bound to the upper part, and the ankles to the lower, so that she could not reach to tear the cords with her teeth. It was dark when they were brought in, and the scene was wild and strange in the extreme. “The fiendish countenances of the Calibanish trio, one of them distorted by pain, for the mother Gorilla was severely wounded, were lit up by the ruddy glare of native torches.” The young male was secured by a chain, and Du Chaillu gave him the name of Tom. His feet and hands were untied, and he immediately showed his want of gratitude by rushing at his possessor, screaming with all his might; but the chain was happily made fast, and he did no harm. The old mother Gorilla was in an unfortunate plight. She had an arm broken, and a wound in the chest, besides being dreadfully beaten about the head; she groaned and roared many times during the night, probably from pain. She lived until the next day, her moanings were more frequent in the morning, and they gradually became weaker as her life ebbed out. Her death was like that of a human being, and her child clung to her to the last, and tried to obtain milk from her breast after she was dead. The young one was kept alive for three days on goat’s milk, but it died on the fourth day. The young male would not be photographed, for pointing the camera at him made the irascible little thing a small demon, but after some attempts his likeness was taken. These Gorillas were caught on a promontory which runs into the sea like a spit. A woman had seen “two sets of Gorillas on it with young ones, and the natives assembled, and armed themselves with great spears and axes, forming a line across the spit, advancing towards its extremity. They made a good deal of noise, and bewildered the Gorillas, who were shot down or beaten in their endeavours to escape. There were eight females together, but no large male.” Du Chaillu, on hearing this, modified his opinion respecting the solitary habit of the animal, and he subsequently obtained proofs that they roam in bands of from five to ten. It is true, however, that when Gorillas become aged, they seem to be more solitary, and live in pairs, or as in the case of old males, quite alone. He was assured by the negroes that solitary and aged Gorillas are sometimes seen almost white, for the hair becomes grizzled with age. Evidently the animal migrates here and there in his restricted district during certain seasons, and they search for a little yellow berry called “rubino,” which grows on a tree resembling the African teak; and also two other fruits, one like the nectarine in size, and of the colour of the peach, but not having the rich bloom, and the other like a plum. The same traveller came suddenly on a band of Gorillas in a forest;“a whole group was on a tree hidden by the dense foliage. They bolted off, making the thinner boughs bend with their weight, and an old male, apparently the guardian of the flock, made a bold stand, and stared at him through an opening. As soon as voices were heard, the shaggy Ape roared a cry of alarm, scrambled to the ground through the entangled lianas that were around the tree trunk, and soon disappeared into the jungle.”

FACE OF THE GORILLA.

Having had, then, so many opportunities of seeing Gorillas alive and dead, Du Chaillu, of course, added largely to the knowledge of their general shape and habits, and obtained skins for stuffing, and bones for the anatomists. Five specimens were sent over by him to England, and great discussions took place; some naturalists asserting that the ferocity and courage of the great Ape were imaginary, and others believing in the truth of Du Chaillu, whose only fault was over-sensational writing, and who strenuously denied many of the native stories. Then the anatomists had a great quarrel about the brain of the creature, and handled each other very severely. Of the nature of the outside of the Gorilla there could be no doubt, fortunately, for there are the stuffed skins and bones to be seen, and an examination of those in the national collection will prove how closely Savage must have questioned the natives who gave him reliable information, and how little can be added to his description. Du Chaillu says that in length the adult Gorillas vary as much as men, and believes that the tallest are six feet two inches in height, but that the average is from five feet two inches to five feet eight inches. The females are smaller, or have a lighter frame, their height averaging about four feet six inches. The colour of the skin in the Gorilla, young as well as adult, is intense black, so far as the face, breast, and palms of the hands are concerned. The fur of a grown, but not aged specimen, is iron-gray, and the individual hairs are ringed with alternate stripes of black and gray. It is long on the arms, and slopes downwards from the shoulder to the elbow, and upwards from the wrist to it. The head is covered with reddish-brown hair, which is short, and reaches the short neck. The chest is bare in the adults, and thinly covered with hair in young males. In the female the breast is bare, and the hair elsewhere is black with a red tinge, but it is not ringed as in the male; moreover, the reddish crown which covers the scalp of the male is not apparent in the female till she has almost become full grown. The eyes are deeply sunken: the immense overhanging long ridge giving the face the expression of a constant savage scowl. The mouth is wide, and the lips are sharply cut, exhibiting no red on the edges, as in the human face. The jaws are of tremendous weight and power. The huge eye-teeth or canines, of the male, which are fully exhibited when, in his rage, he draws back his lips and shows the red colour of the inside of his mouth, lend additional ferocity to his aspect. In the female these teeth are smaller. The almost total absence of neck, which gives the head the appearance of being set into the shoulders, is due to the backward position of the joints which fix the head to the spine, and this allows the chin to hang over the top of the front of the chest. The brain-case is low and compressed, and its lofty top ridge causes the profile of the skull to describe an almost straight line from the back part, or occiput, to the ridge over the brow. The immense development of the muscles, which arise from this ridge, and the corresponding size of the jaw, are evidences of the great strength of the animal. The eyebrows are thin, but not well-defined, and are almost lost in the hair of the scalp. The eyelashes are thin also. The eyes are wide apart; and the ears, which are on a line with them, are smaller than those of man, but very much like his. In a front view of the face the nose is flat, but somewhat prominent—more so than in any other Ape; this is on account of a slightly projecting nose-bone, very unusual in Apes. The chest is of great capacity; the shoulders being exceedingly broad. The abdomen is of immense size, very prominent, and rounded at the sides. The front limbs have aprodigious muscular development, and are very long, extending nearly as low as the knees. The forearm is nearly of uniform size from the wrist to the elbow, and, indeed, the great length of the arms, and the shortness of the legs, form one of the chief differences between it and man. The arms are not long when compared with the trunk, but they are so in comparison with the legs. These are short, and decrease in size from below the knee to the ankle, having no calf. The hands, especially in the male, are of immense size, strong-boned, and thick; the fingers are short and large, the circumference of the middle finger at the first joint being five and a half inches in some Gorillas. The skin on the back of the fingers, near the middle, is callous, and very thick, which shows that the most usual mode of progression of the animal is on all-fours, and resting on the knuckles. The thumb is short, and not half so thick as the forefinger; and the hand is hairy as far as the division of the fingers, which are covered with short thin hairs. The palm of the hand is naked, callous, and intensely black. The nails are black, and shaped like those of man, but are smaller in proportion, and project very slightly beyond the ends of the fingers. They are thick and strong, and always seem much worn. The hand of the Gorilla is almost as wide as it is long, and in this it approaches nearer to that of man than any of the other Apes. The foot is proportionally wider than in man; the sole is callous, and intensely black, and looks somewhat like a giant hand of immense power and grasp. The transverse wrinkles show the frequency and freedom of movement of the two joints of the great toe-thumb, proving that they have a power of grasp. The middle toe, or third, is longer than the second and fourth, and this is unlike the foot in man. The toes are divided into three groups, so to speak; inside the great toe, outside the little toe, and the three others partly united by a web. Du Chaillu thinks that in no other animal is the foot so well adapted for the maintenance of the erect position, and he erroneously believed that the Gorilla is much less of a tree-climber than any other Ape. The foot in the Gorilla is certainly longer than the hand, as in man. These descriptions are fairly correct, but it is necessary to examine the results of the later writers on the subject, from whom we may glean the following facts.

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