PREPARING FOR THE NIGHT
(From a Photograph.)
I fall asleep and rest in comfort, while the dew that has fallen upon the leaves gathers itself into huge drops; their weight bends the leaves, and they fall from their lofty place, striking with a sharp, popping sound the big leaves far below them. The hours fly by; but in the stillness of early morning is heard a most unearthly scream. It is the voice of a king gorilla. He makes every leaf in the forest tremble with the sound of his piercing shrieks.
Thus another night is erased from the calendar of time and another day begins. The dawn awakes to life the teeming forest, and all its denizens again go forth to join the universal chase for food.
All of the incidents here cited are true in every detail, but they did not occur every day, nor did all of them occur on the same day, as might be inferred from the manner in which they are related. But this recital gives a fair idea of the daily routine in the bosom of the great forest, although this is a mere glimpse of the scenes of life in the jungle. By going out for a day or two at a time, hunting on the plains a few miles away, I often relieved the monotony. My menu was occasionally varied by a mess of parrot soup, a piece of goat, fish, or porcupine; but the general average of it was about as has been described.
CHAPTER X
The Chimpanzee—The Name—Two Species—The Kulu-Kamba Distribution—Color and Complexion
Next to man the chimpanzee occupies the highest plane in the scale of nature. His mental and social traits, together with his physical type, assign him to this place.
In his distribution he is confined to equatorial Africa. His habitat, roughly outlined, is from the fourth parallel north of the equator to the fifth parallel south of it, along the west coast, and extends eastward a little more than halfway across the continent. His range cannot be defined with precision, for its exact limits are not yet known. Its boundary on the north is defined by the Cameroon valley, slightly curving towards the north; but its extent eastward is a matter of some doubt. He does not appear to be found anywhere north of that river, and it is quite certain that the few specimens attributed to the north coast of the Gulf of Guinea do not belong to that territory. On the south the boundary of his habitat starts from the coast, at a point near the fifth parallel, curves slightly northward, crosses the Congo near Stanley Pool, pursues a northeasterly course to about the middle of the Congo State, and again curves southward across the Upper Congo, not far from the north end of Lake Tanganyika. Its limits appear to conform more to isothermal lines than to the rigid lines of geography. Specimens are sometimes secured by collectors beyond these limits, but, so far as I have been able to ascertain, they have been captured within the territory thus bounded. There are several centers of population. This ape is not strictly confined to any definite topography, but occupies alike the upland forests or the low basin lands.
In one section he is known to the natives by one name, and in another by a name entirely different. The name chimpanzee is of native origin. In the Fiote tongue the name of the ape is chimpan, which is a slight corruption of the true name. It is properly a compound word. The first syllable is from the Fiote word tyi, which white men erroneously pronounce like “chee.” It means “small,” or inferior, and it is found in many of the native compounds. The last syllable is from mpa, a bushman; hence the word literally means, in the Fiote tongue, “a small bushman,” or inferior race. The name really implies the idea of a lower order of human being. Among other tribes a common name of the ape is ntyigo. The latter is derived from the Mpongwe word ntyia, blood, race, or breed, and the word iga, the forest. It literally means the “breed of the forest.” The same idea of its being a low type of humanity is involved in the two names. Both convey the oblique suggestion that the animal is more nearly allied to man than other animals are.