XIII.
PAUL BELLONI DU CHAILLU,
Discoverer of the Dwarfs and Gorillas.
Among the thousands of vigorous and adventurous men whom chance brought to light in foreign climes, but who by choice have cast their lot with America, by becoming citizens of the United States, there are few whose explorations and discoveries have excited more popular interest and discussion than have those of Du Chaillu, the discoverer, in modern times, of the dwarfs and the capturer of the gorilla.
| Paul Belloni Du Chaillu. |
Born in Paris, July 31, 1835, the early environments of Paul Belloni Du Chaillu fostered and forecast his taste for African exploration, for his father was one of the adventurous Frenchmen whose consular appointment and commercial enterprises led him to settle at the mouth of the Gaboon, on the west coast of Africa, where his distinguished son passed his boyhood. While young Du Chaillu was, doubtless, well grounded in ordinary sciences by his instructors, the learned Jesuit fathers, of Gaboon, yet apart from regular educational institutions he imbibed other wealth of learning by observation of the rich tropical world around him, and also through familiar intercourse with neighboring tribes acquired a knowledge of native tongues and craft, of savage habits and character, which insured his after-success in African exploration.
Commercial pursuits brought Du Chaillu to the United States, in 1852, when he was so strongly impressed by American institutions that he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Du Chaillu was brought prominently before the American public by a series of striking and interesting articles on the Gaboon country, which from their favorable reception strengthened his belief in the importance of thoroughly exploring certain portions of the west coast of Africa. The region selected for his investigations was under the burning sun of the equator, somewhat to the north of the Congo country, in the basins drained by the Muni, Ogowe, and Rembo Rivers, which, owing to difficulty of access, extreme heat, prevailing fevers, and deadly climate, were practically unknown. Between 1856 and 1859 Du Chaillu journeyed upward of eight thousand miles through this country, travelling on foot, with no white companion, and, with the aid of natives, cursorily explored nearly one hundred thousand square miles of virgin territory. Working with the ardent zeal of a naturalist, his enormous ornithological collection aggregated thousands of specimens, and in this collection alone he added some sixty new species of birds to the domain of science. Among the quadrupeds, he discovered no less than twenty new species, and among the most important animals brought to light were the very remarkable nest-building ape, with its unknown and its almost equally extraordinary brother the koo-loo-lamba, and his observations of the almost unknown gorilla were most interesting and valuable.
In ethnology he accumulated a number of invaluable native arms and implements, which now adorn the British Museum. Space fails in which to recite his intense sufferings, during these explorations, from semi-starvation, the wild beasts of the dense forests, the venomous reptiles of the river valleys, the attacks of ferocious ants, and other intolerable poisonous insects which infest the interior.
There are many interesting accounts of curious quadrupeds in Du Chaillu’s book, “Adventures in Equatorial Africa,” but none appeals more strongly to most readers than that of the gorilla. Traditions from antiquity, the relation of Hanno, the Carthaginian navigator of 350 B.C., set forth the existence of such an animal, but no white man had ever seen a gorilla, except Andrew Battell, early in the seventeenth century. Nearly ten years before the explorations of Du Chaillu the gorilla had been, however, brought to the notice of naturalists by Dr. Savage, of Boston, who had received a skull from the Rev. J. L. Wilson, an American missionary on the Gaboon.