[Calongo.]
To the northwards of Longo, three leagues, is the river Quelle:[163] and on the north side is the province of Calongo [Chilunga]. This country is always tilled, and full of corn, and is all plain and champaign ground, and hath great store of honey. Here are two little villages that show at sea like two hummocks,[164] which are the marks to show the port of Longo; and fifteen miles northward is the river Nombo,[165] but it hath no depth for any bark to go in. This province, towards the east, bordereth upon Bongo; and towards the north upon Mayombe, which is nineteen leagues from Longo along the coast.
[Yumbe.][166]
The province of Mayombe is all woods and groves, so overgrown that a man may travel twenty days in the shadow, without any sun or heat. Here is no kind of corn nor grain, so that the people liveth only upon plantains and roots of sundry other sorts, very good, and nuts; nor any kind of tame cattle, nor hens. But they have great store of elephants’ flesh, which they greatly esteem, and many kinds of wild beasts; and great store of fish. Here is a great sandy bay, two leagues to the southward of Cape Negro, which is the port of Mayombe. Sometimes the Portugals take logwood[167] in this bay. Here is a great river called Banna.[168] In the winter it hath no bar, because the general winds cause a great sea; but when the sun hath his south declination, then a boat may go in, for then it is smooth because of the rain. This river is very great, and hath many islands, and people dwelling in them. The woods are covered with baboons, monkeys, apes and parrots, that it will fear any man to travel in them alone. Here also are two kinds of monsters, which are common in these woods, and very dangerous.
[Gorillas and Chimpanzis.][169]
The greatest of these two monsters is called Pongo [Mpungu] in their language, and the lesser is called Engeco. This Pongo is in all proportions like a man, but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man’s face, hollow-eyed, with long hair upon his brows. His face and ears are without hair, and his hands also. His body is full of hair, but not very thick, and it is of a dunnish colour. He differeth not from a man but in his legs, for they have no calf. He goeth always upon his legs, and carryeth his hands clasped upon the nape of his neck when he goeth upon the ground. They sleep in the trees, and build shelters from the rain. They feed upon fruit they find in the woods and upon nuts, for they eat no kind of flesh. They cannot speak, and have no more understanding than a beast.
The people of the country, when they travel in the woods, make fires when they sleep in the night. And in the morning, when they are gone, the Pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out, for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. They go many together, and kill many negroes that travel in the woods. Many times they fall upon the elephants, which come to feed where they be, and so beat them with their clubbed fists and pieces of wood that they will run roaring away from them.
Those Pongoes are never taken alive, because they are so strong that ten men cannot hold one of them, but yet they take many of their young ones with poisoned arrows. The young Pongo hangeth on his mother’s belly, with his hands clasped fast about her, so that when the country people kill any of the females, they take the young one which hangeth fast upon his mother. When they die among themselves, they cover the dead with great heaps of boughs and wood, which is commonly found in the forests.
[Purchas adds in a marginal note:
“He told me in a conference with him that one of these Pongos took a negro boy of his, which lived a month with them, for they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them, which he [the boy] avoided. He said, their height was like a man’s, but their bigness twice as great. I saw the negro boy.