CHAPTER VII.
AN AFRICAN FIRESIDE.—A CAMP BY THE SEA-SHORE.—THE FIRST GORILLA HUNTER.—NEGRO BLARNEY.
As I and my men lay by the fire, I said to them—“Now to-night I am going to tell you a story; an old story from the white man’s country concerning yours.” There was a very great silence at once, for they knew it was not often I came out with a story, and they all shouted with one accord—“Tell us a story!” at the same time forming a circle round me.
So I begun: “Ever so long ago, and a long way off from here, but still in your own land, there was a powerful country called Carthage. The people of that country were brave and not afraid of war. They had many ships, and their ships went into different countries. At that time the Commi nation must have been a long way in the interior and your people had never seen the sea.
“Would you believe,” said I, “that these Carthaginians came with their ships round here? And I really think they saw the very country in which we now are! They not only saw this country, but saw the gorilla, yes, saw the gorilla! If you were in the white man’s country I would show you the old manuscript (the book), where we have an account of what I am going to say. You know,” said I, “that words coming from the mouth are soon forgotten, but these words that are written are not.” Then taking from my chest my journal, I read it to them, and then said—“When I am dead, and you and your children are dead, and for ever so long afterward, that journal, if it is not lost, will be read in the same manner as I read it to you to-day, and the people will understand the meaning of it then as you do to-day, and will know what I did, though thousands of rainy and dry seasons may pass away.
“So Hanno the Carthaginian,” I continued, “was the head-man of all these ships, and left Carthage with sixty vessels. In that time the ships were unlike those you see now, and thirty thousand men and women are said to have sailed with him. Each ship was rowed by fifty oarsmen. When we read that book called the ‘Periplus; or, The Voyage of Hanno,’ we find the following words in which we now suppose he alludes to the gorilla:
“‘On the third day, having sailed from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay called the Horn of the South.’
[“That ‘Horn of the South,’” I added, “might be Cape Lopez.”]
“‘In the recess was an island like the first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild men.’”
[At this point of my story they looked in each other’s faces with amazement.]
“‘But the greater part of them were women with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called Gorillas.’”