(Gorgades Insulas) Hanno Ponorum imperator, prodiditque hirta fœminarum corpora duarumque Gorgonum cutes argumenti et miraculi gratia in Junonis templo posuit spectatas, usque ad Carthaginem captam." These skins were seen there at the taking of Carthage by the Romans. It was about 500 years B.C. that Hanno was chosen, with Himilco, by the Carthaginians, when at the height of their prosperity, to explore neighbouring countries and to establish colonies. Himilco sailed towards Europe; but Hanno passed the columns of Hercules (Gibraltar) with his fleet of sixty ships, carrying three thousand men, women, and children; and though some geographers think he never got beyond Cape Blanco, others think he reached Senegal and Guinea; while M. Dureau de la Malle, who has especially studied the antiquity of the Gorilla, considers that the animals having been seen by Hanno, and the name so decidedly recorded, is a proof that the Gaboon was reached. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire thinks the hairy people must have been Chimpanzees, as they would be found near the coast, while the Gorilla is an inhabitant of the inland forests, and is too fierce and courageous to run away. The name, remarkable as it is in its antiquity, says little; it has of course only been revived by Mr. Savage, and may have been applied by Hanno to the smaller animal.]

If you Caucasians,-I say nothing of Bushmen, Negroes, Esquimaux, and people of that sort,-pique yourselves upon being descended from old families, as we know that you do, you must allow that we have the advantage of you. What, indeed, are all the classic allusions of your poets to PAN, the spirit of Nature, and his race of sylvan deities, but a confession of our being the true type of the natural man? And does not the taste of the best of you for hunting and leading a wild life in the woods betray our common ancestry? Do you not make rather a boast that the instincts of the savage crop out in your most cultivated societies, showing itself now in a prize-fight, then in fashionable views about muscular Christianity? We have no battles; we don't murder one another; we don't even eat up our enemies, as some of you do that I could name. It is a calumny to say, as your travellers often have, that our braves lie in wait for human victims passing through the woods, and seize them by the hair of their heads, dragging them up into trees to be devoured; or that Gorillas have ever used their feet in strangling men by seizing them by the neck. Neither is it worth my while to refute those odious stories of our largest and finest Gorillas running away with your women, as your barons of old were so fond of doing, and thought such a very gallant enterprise. I repeat, that we are peaceable natives of the woods, living upon fruit and vegetable food entirely: we are not brigands, and we never make a foray upon any thing but sugar-canes. If our monkey is put up, that's quite a different thing; then we can match the bravest of you. It is quite true that most of our tribe whom you have got in your museums, and, I believe, all those procured by this Du Chaillu, were shot in the back: they were taken at a disadvantage, and killed in a cowardly

manner. M. du Chaillu tells a fine story about his combat with our king, in which he cleverly contrives to add to his own glory by exalting the terrible prowess of his adversary. For our sake, I wish it was true, but for his own it were better he had never related the adventure, for it is all a fudge. None of our tribe have ever yet fought with white men. It is true that a king or chief of ours was some years ago (1855) killed, and his body carried off by some blacks, who sold it to some of your traders; and I believe this noble fellow is now to be seen in the Museum at Vienna. The individual described by M. du Chaillu is quite a commoner; he never would have been chosen by us as a chief,-for we think a great deal of bodily strength: all our heroes have been very tall, strong men; and here again I would remind you that your Hercules and Theseus are evidently borrowed from us. The hero whose remains you exhibit at Vienna stands full six feet six, while the pretended antagonist of M. du Chaillu measures only five feet six. For the last thirty years the black men, who are much more ferocious and cruel than we are, and who, as you know, always eat one another after a fight, because they are too idle to bury their dead, have been trying to kidnap our tribe to sell us for slaves. This cruel practice they have learnt from you white people; and when they cannot catch us alive, they are mean enough to sell our dead bodies, or even our skins and bones, for trifling sums. We are aware that in this way have been obtained those of our nation who are in the Paris Museum, at Brussels, at Leyden, the individual who was shown at Havre (in 1836), and another at Boston, America (in 1847). Ngina, a noted Gorilla chief of ours, was in this way killed, and sold, after he had been hawked about by those rascally niggers, to Dr. Franquet; and the French Admiral Penaud was good enough to give him a barrel of spirits and stuff to preserve the body. This was in 1852; and it was certainly a melancholy satisfaction to his relatives on the Gaboon to know that Ngina, the first of our race taken in the flesh,-for all the others you got were only skins, was received with profound respect and consideration at the great Exposition Universelle of 1855. Here, indeed, Ngina was under the especial protection of M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, to whom our tribe owes an everlasting debt of gratitude for his constant endeavours to raise the condition and merits of Troglodytes in general. The Paris public also testified their regard for our race by the avidity with which they purchased a very admirable statuette portrait, modelled by an eminent sculptor, and under the immediate direction of the great naturalist Geoffroy himself. Speaking of portraits of our family, I beg particularly to say that those exhibited by M. du Chaillu are what you call "dealer's portraits." They are all copies, and very bad ones too. The full-length which forms the frontispiece to his " Adventures" is a mutilated copy from the coloured lithograph by M. Boucourt, which is in the paper by M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire.* The portrait of a young Gorilla is also a bad copy from the

*Contributed in 1858 to the Archives du Museum. This specimen measures 1 metre 67,-about 5 feet 6.-E». T. B.

excellent drawings of the two children—a boy and girl-kidnapped from our country in 1851, and sent in spirits to Paris. In fact, no portrait from the life has ever left the Gaboon, and for the best of reasons,—the niggers are the only human beings that have ever seen any of us, except those miserable invalids dragged about by Yankee skippers and others on the coast; and they never could be persuaded to sit. If M. du Chaillu had seen so many Gorillas, and actually shot the twenty-two he says he did, he cannot be any cleverer than the blacks if he did not make an attempt at a portrait. He has nevertheless drawn a Nshiego mbouve-what he calls a nest-building ape-sitting under his thatch of branches, all wonderfully well drawn,-rather too well, in fact. Was this done on the spot? If it was, then he might have drawn our portraits. If it was done to order, like the other illustrations of his "Adventures," then it has no truth or value. Some cousins of ours are in the habit of choosing snug places on the branches of trees, where large ferns and such-like spreading plants grow out, and form a very good natural shelter. I dare say M. du Chaillu has heard of these individuals, and it struck him his book would be more complete if he could give a fancy sketch of one of them "at home," with a fancy description of how he had the trees cut down so as to examine the construction of this sort of umbrella-roof. If you compare the drawing of a young nest-building ape with one of a young Chimpanzee taken from life in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, it will at once be seen to be a facsimile; and the same of another, supposed to represent an adult Nshiego, which is also a reversed copy from M. St. Hilaire's work. If M. du Chaillu had ever really been amongst us in Gaboon country, he would have learnt that the individual he calls a new species, as Troglodytes calrus, was merely one of our Chimpanzee cousins, who form a caste of sages amongst us, and, being given to study, had become bald,-a result which, they say, is not uncommon amongst your literary men.

We grin at the way this M. du Chaillu deceives himself, and hope the scientific naturalists will suspend their judgment until some of them have visited us, when, I venture to say, they will find us not exactly the roaring monsters supposed. As yet no white man has ever seen us chez nous but one, of whose visit we have an old tradition. His name was Andrew Battell; and he is well remembered amongst us from the old grudge which every Gorilla owes him for having ridiculed the one especially tender point in which we differ from you: he laughed at us because we had no calves to our legs; but it's my opinion, from what I've seen of Negroes' legs,-I don't know how it may be with your people,-that this distinguishing characteristic is sometimes wanting in the genus Homo. I have been told all your great people, when they go into the presence of your Queen, are obliged to show their calves; and it would be such a disgrace to appear without them, that many persons wear false ones. But we know that if most of you had not got legs precisely like ours, you would not have adopted the odd fashion of wearing trousers. We never wear false calves

or trousers, because our beauty is not in the legs, but in the arms; and in this feature we flatter ourselves it would be quite in vain for you to pretend to superiority. With us a long brawny arm, reaching to the middle of the leg, and a large hand, with very short fingers, are esteemed the perfection of Gorilla beauty. Chacun à son goût. Allow me to point out another feature, which you consider the most important in a man's face; I mean the nose. We have the best noses of all the Simians; ordinary apes, and even Chimpanzees, have only two holes in the middle of their face, while we have fine expanded nostrils, rather better than most Negroes. Our ears too are considered pretty, and quite manly, compared with the large ears of Negroes and Chimpanzees. Our feet have an advantage over yours in the great toe, which with us is a large thumb; but I am told there is a race of men who live in France who have feet like ours.*

[The Andrew Battell referred to was an old sailor-adventurer, who wrote an account of his "strange adventures," which is fortunately preserved by Purchas, in his curious and rare work, Pilgrime, or Relation of the World and Religion, 5 vols. folio, 1625. Andrew, he tells us, was taken prisoner by the Indians in Brazil, and in 1590 was sent on a voyage to the west coast of Africa. Here he was taken from the Indians by the Portuguese settlers at Angola, being afterwards handed over to the natives as a hostage; and living amongst these savages in Congo for eighteen years, he eventually returned to England. His description is far better than M. du Chaillu's, and from the geographical position of the places he visited, it is seen that the country was precisely that of the Gaboon. He says, that in the forests of Mayamba, in the kingdom of Loango, there are two sorts of monsters, the largest one called Pongo, and the smaller Engeco. He also mentions the name of Ngina, as the native word for the large species, which with Gorilla has since been adopted by scientific naturalists as Gorilla Gina. Battell says, that both were exactly like men, but much stronger and bigger; their hands, cheeks, and ears are not hairy, except at the parts where the whiskers grow in man; and the eyebrows, which are long and shaggy, hanging over their fierce eyes. The only particular in which he notices a great difference is in their short bandy legs, with no calf. George Smith, in his travels in Guinea, in 1751, speaks of a Mandrill and a Boogoe; the first evidently a European name, the other is probably Battell's Pongo. Other travellers, Noel, Peiresc, and Gassendi, speak of the Gorilla under the name of Barris. M. Noel gives a very fabulous account of him, as having a long white beard, venerable, and reported to be a musician! Mr. Bowdich, ambassador from England to Ashante, in 1817, also gave some account of the ourang-outang of Africa, calling it after the name

* These are the turpentine gatherers, who are taught from childhood to climb the fir-trees, in search of the turpentine. They never wear shoes; their great toes are spread out and opposable, like the thumb. These people form a colony of their own, living in the Landes, in the south of France.-ED. T.B.

familiar to us from childhood, as belonging to the animal found in Borneo, in the Eastern Archipelago. He says, these creatures were not uncommon in the country of the Gaboon. He saw one two and a half feet high, which followed its master about like a dog, and had the face and gait of an old man. This was probably the Chimpanzee, or possibly a young Gorilla, which are now common there. But Mr. Bowdich also tells us, that the natives always spoke of another animal of the same kind, but twice as large, which they called Ingena; a word evidently another spelling of the Ngina, as we have it. This creature was the favourite subject of conversation, and many wonderful stories were told of it by the natives. It built houses in imitation of the native huts, buried the dead under leaves and branches; but if a very young one died while at the breast, the mother carried it about in her arms till it became putrid.]

The accounts you have hitherto read of us Gorillas are yarns told by the blacks to astonish the whites. But M. du Chaillu, who professes to have spent so many months in the Gorilla country, has very little more precise to tell. He is certainly minute when he speaks; and if you will refer to my friend M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, you will find that he has not only borrowed his portraits from him, but all his story is founded entirely upon the accounts collected by M. Geoffroy, even to Ngina wrenching the gun out of the hunter's hand and biting the barrel, and the practice of waiting till he came within six yards before firing. As to his description of the fight, it is just the old story coloured to suit the taste for sensations; you wonder that a man so small as M. du Chaillu should meet and conquer such a formidable giant of the forest. Observe how he makes us first "Blub, blub, blub," then rise crescendo into a roar like thunder, heard for miles! Now we are neither given to blubbering nor roaring; we have our war-cry, which, of course, we give out with a will, and your traveller Ford described it quite correctly as "Kh-ah! kh-ah!" like the cry of the Chimpanzees, but louder and more terrible. If you ask Professor Owen, he will tell you that none of us Troglodytes roar; indeed, we pride ourselves on our voice, which is quite human compared with the growl of the flesh-eating felines and canines. Then this wonderful little Frenchman pictures us advancing to meet him, thumping our chest with rage and defiance. He must excuse me for saying that this is not a habit of ours; it was suggested perhaps by the manners of a more demonstrative people than we are. We are men of few words, and not fond of attitudes. No; this beating the chest has a double meaning: it heightens the combat, and fully accounts for all the traveller's skins having lost the hair on the front of the body. How it happens that they have no more on the back is explained with equal neatness in the pretty description of a faithful husband Gorilla, sitting, rubbing and rocking himself, at the foot of a tree, while his wife sleeps in the branches. M. du Chaillu shows his ignorance of our domestic relations in this: we are polygamists, and, like your sect of the Mormons, we live in commonalties, under one great chief, whose responsibilities are so distributed that he would find it impossible to sit