The genus Chimpanzee (Pithecus troglodytes) is by some later naturalists preferred to that foremost place among the Quadrumana in which Cuvier had installed the orang-outang. He certainly approaches the nearest—though longo intervallo—to man, of all his race. He was long confounded with other Anthropomorphous genera, under the vague name of “Man of the Woods” (Homo sylvestris). It would appear to have been the Chimpanzee that Buffon had in his “mind’s eye” when describing his Jocko; although that ideal variety of shaggy men, with flat, oval visage, long legs, tall and erect figure, which stands before us in the great naturalist’s pages, bears but little resemblance to the animal we have seen in the Zoological Gardens, or the more faithful and judicious portrait drawn by modern travellers. But the name of Jocko is evidently a corruption of that of Enge-eko, which the negroes of the Gaboon bestow upon the Chimpanzee, just as the latter appellation is an imperfect reproduction of that of Quimpezé, in use among the negroes of Angola.
Putting aside these speculations, we see that the only well-defined species of this genus is the black Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger of the present nomenclature, Pygmea of Tyson). His home is the forests of the Gaboon, the coast of Angola, and Guinea. His face is larger and flatter than that of the orang. He has large ears, but shaped like those of men. On the head, shoulders, and back, he wears a coat of long black hair; his legs are short, and his arms very long; yet he is better able to walk like a biped than the macaucos, or even the orangs and the gibbons. Of all the Simidæ, he alone has calves to his legs. He has neither tail, ischiatic callosities, abajoues, nor thyroïdian pouch. The hair of his head is parted on the summit, and falls down on either side, surrounding the ear and jaws, and mingling with that of the neck. His bare, wrinkled face is of a light copper colour; so are the palms of his hands, and his fingers, but his nails are generally black.
The highest stature to which the Chimpanzee can attain is about four and a half feet; but as he never stands absolutely erect, he appears much shorter. His small eyes, deep sunken in their orbits, are of a dark hazel colour. The cranium, even in young specimens, is depressed, and presents, in advance of a low receding forehead, a projecting superciliary ridge. As the animal advances in years, his muzzle lengthens, his jaws develop, his skull grows more depressed; at the same time his intelligence gradually disappears, his manners become fiercer, and his disposition less tractable; in a word, the instincts of the brute regain their supremacy. Such, at least, is the statement of the best accredited authorities; as for the individuals imported into Europe, they invariably die at too early an age for any one to study their habits and character in maturity.
The Chimpanzees live, it is said, in troops in the forests, or at least they congregate for the purpose of repelling the attacks made upon them by the carnaria, and to drive from their domains such other animals as may attempt to install themselves therein to their disadvantage. Their weapons are ready to their hand—stones and the branches of trees. Their diet is essentially a frugivorous one; yet they will occasionally indulge in a lizard or two, or any other reptile. Like the orangs, they construct rude beds or couches, of interwoven boughs stripped of their greenery. The negroes of Guinea, scarcely much higher in the scale of intelligence than themselves, look upon them as a nation, and believe that if these Men of the Woods do not speak, it is because they fear to be condemned to work or carried off into slavery, and not from incapacity.
A recent traveller, whose adventures have been the subject of much discussion, and who for a considerable period enjoyed the reputation of a Mendez Pinto or a Munchausen, asserts that he discovered at the Gaboon two new species of Chimpanzees. One, called by the natives Nshiégo-Mbouvé, and to which he gave the scientific name of Troglodytes calvus, builds for himself some leafy screens of quite artistic construction upon isolated trees. He is smaller than the ordinary Chimpanzee, and bald.
The other species distinguished by M. Du Chaillu[176] is the Kooloo-Kamba. He is distinguished from all his congeners by a very peculiar cry. While offering a general resemblance to man, he approaches him more nearly in certain respects than all the other known apes. His head is very remarkable, and presents a curious analogy to that of an Esquimaux or a Chinese. His face is hairless, and wholly black. The forehead is loftier than that of any of his congeners, and the capacity of his skull is also greater in proportion to his height. A wider space occurs between his eyes than is customary with the great Simiadæ. He has a flattened nose, high projecting cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, and a well-marked orbitary arch. The muzzle is less prominent, and larger in proportion than that of other apes. Both sides of his face are ornamented with straight tufts of hair, which, joining below the chin like whiskers, communicate a strange human character to the whole countenance. His arms descend below his knees. All the body is hairy. The shoulders are broad, the hands long and narrow, and well adapted for climbing trees. Both arm and hand are exceedingly muscular; the abdomen is very prominent. The ample ears rather resemble those of a man than the ears of any other ape.
Our peregrinations now bring us to the giant of the Quadrumana, the true king of the forests of Equatorial Africa; in a word, to the Gorilla, whom Buffon has described under the name of Pongo, almost as exactly as he pictured the Chimpanzee under that of Jacko.
We cannot be said to have known the Gorilla for more than a quarter of a century.
It was in 1847 that Dr. Savage, an American missionary, recognized the Pongo as a species of the genus Troglodytes, distinct from the Chimpanzee, and named him Troglodytes Gorilla, in allusion to the celebrated narrative of the Carthaginian Hanno relative to the pretended female Gorillas which that navigator professed to have seen in an island of the Gulf of Guinea. Since that period the Gorilla has been carefully studied by the eminent naturalist Professor Owen. Messieurs Gautier and Franquet, French naval surgeons, collected some important information upon the habits and physiology of this great ape, and M. Franquet procured for the Paris Museum the skeleton of an adult Gorilla. Other dead and preserved specimens have since been imported into England and France, and the anatomy of this African Troglodytes is accurately known. And, finally, M. Du Chaillu, in the work already quoted, has supplied numerous strange and interesting details, which, if at first discredited and contested, are now very generally accepted as strictly accurate.
The name of “Pongo,” applied to the Gorilla by Battel and Buffon, is clearly a modification or corruption of that of the tribe of Mpongwéss, who dwell on the banks of the Gaboon, not far from the forests tenanted by this mysterious Quadrumane.