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Show 2 tur," and contains a brief passage to the effect that "in t~e Songan country, on the banks of the Zaire, there are multitudes of apes, which afford great delight to the nobles by imitating human gestures." As this might apply to almost any kind of apes, I should have tho~ght ~ittle of it, had not the brothers De Bry, whose engravings Illustrate the work, thought fit, in their eleventh '' Argumentum," to figure two of these ,, Simire magnatum delicire." So much of the plate as contains these apes is faithfully copied in the woodcut (fig. 1 ), and it will be observed that they are tail-le s, longarmed, and large-eared; and about the size of Chimpanzee . It may be that these apes are as much figmeuts of the imagination of the ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same plate; or, on the other hand, it may be that the artists have constructed their drawings from some essentially faithful description of a Gorilla or a Chimpanzee. And, in either case, though these figures are worth a passing notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman. · The first edition of that most amusing old book, "Pure has his Pilgrimage," wa.s published in 1613, and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms "Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of Saint Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of Angola;" and again, "my friend, Andrew Battle, w~o lived in the kingdom of Congo many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the Portugais (among whom he was a sergeant of a band)' and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woodes." From this weath~r-beaten old soldier, Purchas fettrun, olim ex Edoardo Lopez acro~mll;tis lingua Italica excerpta, num Latio sermone donata ab August. Cassiod. Reinio. Iconibus et imaginibus rerum memorabilium quasi vivis, opera et industria Joan. Thcouori ct J oun. Israelis de Bry, fratrum exornata. Francofurti, MDXCVIII. 3 was amazed to hear "of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature- of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape.* They lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees." This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work-"Purchas his Pilgrimes/' published in 1625, by the same author-· which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. The chapter is entitled, "The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugais prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adioining regions neere eighteene yeeres." And the sixth section of this chapter is headed-" Of the Provinces of Bongo, Calongo, Mayombe, Manikesocke, Motimbas: of the Ape Monster Pongo, their hunting : Idolatries; and divers other observations." " This province (Calongo) toward the east bordereth upon Bongo, and toward the north upon Mayombe, which is nineteen leagues from Longo along the coast. "This province of Mayombe is all woods and groves, so overgrowne that a man may travaile twentie days in the shadow without any sunne or heat. Here is no kind of corne nor graine, so that the people liveth onely upon plantanes ana roots of sundrie sorts, very good; and nuts; nor any kinde of tame cattell, nor hens. "But they have great store of elephant's flesh, which they greatly esteeme, and many kinds of wild beasts ; and great store of fish. Here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the northward of Cape Negro,t which is the port of Mayombe. Sometimes the Portugais lade Iogwood in this bay. Here is * ''Except this that their legges had no calves."-fEd. 1626.] And in a marginal note," These great apes arc called Pongo's.'' t Pm·clws' 11ote.-Cape Negro is in 16 degrees sonth of the line. n2 |