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Show 6 Western Africa. The " Engeco," however, is that '' other monster" whose nature Battell ''forgot to relate," while the name "Pongo "-applied to the animal whose character and habits are so fully and carefully described-seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and signification. Indeed, there is evidence that not only in Battcll's time, but up to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different sense from that in which he employs it. For example, the second chaptc>r of Purchas' work, which I have just quoted, contains '' A Description and Hi toricall Declaration of the Golden Kingdom of Guinea, &c. &c. Translated from the Dutch, and compared al o with the Latin/' wherein it is stated (p. 986) that- " The River Gaboon lyeth about. fifteen miles northward from Rio de Angra, and eight miles northward from Cape de J.Jope Gonsalvez (Cape Lopez), and is right under the Equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from St. rl'homas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. At the mouth of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon it beateth mightily ~ith the streame 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." 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 • Archives du Museum, Tome X. 7 of Pongo; and that theN' Pongues (as, in agreement with Dr. Savage, he affirms the natives call themselves) term the estuary of the Gaboon itself N' Pongo. 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 wa~ ever brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' "Observa~ tiones Medicoo," published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to what he calls Satyrus indicus, '' called by the Indians Orang-autang, or Man-ofthe Woods, and by the Afri ... cans Quoias Morrou.'' He gives a very good figure, evidently from the life, of Fm. 2.-Thc Orang of Tulpius, 1641. the specimen of this aNimal, '' nostra memoria ex Angola dclatum," presented to Frederick |
