Evidence as to Mans Place In Nature | Page 6

which runneth out of the
river into the sea. This river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles
broad; but when you are about the Iland called 'Pongo', it is not above
two miles broad.... On both sides the river there standeth many trees....
The Iland called 'Pongo', which hath a monstrous high hill."
FIG 2.--The Orang of Tulpius, 1641.
The French naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late M.
Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire's excellent essay on the Gorilla*, note in
similar terms the width of the Gaboon, the trees that line its banks
down to the water's edge, and the strong current that sets out of it. They
describe two islands in its estuary;--one low, called Perroquet; the other
high, presenting three conical hills, called Coniquet; and one of them,
M. Franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the Chief of Coniquet was
called 'Meni-Pongo', meaning thereby Lord of 'Pongo'; and that the
'N'Pongues' (as, in agreement with Dr. Savage, he affirms the natives
call themselves) term the estuary of the Gaboon itself 'N'Pongo'.
[footnote] *'Archives du Museum', tome x.

It is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand their
applications of words to things, that one is at first inclined to suspect
Battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his
"greater monster" still abounds, with the name of the animal itself. But
he is so right about other matters (including the name of the "lesser
monster") that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and, on
the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years' later
date speaks of the name "Boggoe," as applied to a great Ape, by the
inhabitants of quite another part of Africa--Sierra Leone.
But I must leave this question to be settled by philologers and travellers;
and I should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for the curious
part played by this word 'Pongo'in the later history of the man-like
Apes.
The generation which succeeded Battell saw the first of the man-like
Apes which was ever brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit
found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' 'Observationes Medicae',
published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to what he
calls 'Satyrus indicus', "called by the Indians Orang-autang or
Man-of-the-Woods, and by the Africans Quoias Morrou." He gives a
very good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal,
"nostra memoria ex Angola delatum," presented to Frederick Henry
Prince of Orange. Tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years
old, and as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with
black hair. It is plainly a young Chimpanzee.
In the meanwhile, the existence of other, Asiatic, man-like Apes
became known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. Thus Bontius
(1658) gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure
of an animal which he calls "Orang-outang"; and though he says "vidi
Ego cujus effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see Fig. 6 for
Hoppius' copy of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather
comely aspect, and with proportions and feet wholly human. The
judicious English anatomist, Tyson, was justified in saying of this
description by Bontius, "I confess I do mistrust the whole
representation."

It is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor Cowper, that we
owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions to
scientific accuracy and completeness. The treatise entitled,
"'Orang-outang, sive Homo Sylvestris'; or the Anatomy of a Pygmie
compared with that of a 'Monkey', an 'Ape', and a 'Man'," published by
the Royal Society in 1699, is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and
has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. This
"Pygmie," Tyson tells us "was brought from Angola, in Africa; but was
first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a
coal-black colour and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all
four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the
ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when
weak and had not strength enough to support its body."--"From the top
of the head to the heel of the foot, in a strait line, it measured
twenty-six inches."
FIGS. 3 and 4.--The 'Pygmie' reduced from Tyson's figures 1 and 2,
1699.
These characters, even without Tyson's good figures (Figs. 3 and 4),
would have been sufficient to prove his "Pygmie" to be a young
Chimpanzee. But the opportunity of examining the skeleton of the very
animal Tyson anatomised having most unexpectedly presented itself to
me, I am able to bear independent testimony to