“We travelled with great caution, not to alarm our prey, and had a hope
that, by singling out a shelter, and waiting till dark, we should find
it occupied. In this hope we were not disappointed. Lying quite still
in our concealment (which tried my patience sorely), we at last, just
at dusk, heard the peculiar ‘Hew, hew, hew,’ which is the call of the
male to his mate. We waited till it was quite dark, and then I saw what
I had so longed all the weary afternoon to see. A Nschiego was sitting
in his nest. His feet rested on the lower branch, his head reached
quite into the little dome of the roof, and his arm was clasped firmly
round the tree-trunk. This is their way of sleeping. After gazing till
I was tired through the gloom at my sleeping victim, two of us fired,
and the unfortunate beast fell at our feet without a struggle, or even
a groan. We built a fire at once, and made our camp in this place, that
when daylight came I might first of all examine and skin my prize. The
poor Ape was hung up to be out of the way of insects, and I fell asleep
on my bed of leaves and grass, as pleased a man as the world could well
hold. Next morning I had leisure to examine the Nschiego.
[Illustration: NSCHIEGO MBOUVÉ. (From a Stuffed Specimen.)]
“I was at once struck with points of difference between it and the
Chimpanzee. It was smaller, and had a bald black head. This is its
distinctive character. This specimen was three feet eleven inches high,
or long. It was an adult. Its skin, where there is no hair, is black,
and the thick breast and abdomen are covered with short and rather thin
blackish hairs. On the lower part of the abdomen the hair is thinnest,
but this is not perceived unless looked at carefully, as the skin is
the colour of the hair. On the legs the hair is of a dirty grey, mixed
with black. The shoulders and back have black hair between two and
three inches long, mixed with a little grey. The arms down to the wrist
have also long black hair, but shorter than in the Gorilla. The hair
is blacker, longer, glossier, and thinner in general than that on the
Gorilla, and the skin is not so tough. I noticed that the bare places,
where the hair is worn off by contact with hard substances in sleeping,
were different from the bare places which are so conspicuous on the
common Chimpanzee.
“It is not as powerful an animal as the Gorilla, its chest is not so
large, but the arms and fingers are a little longer, and this is the
case with the toes also. The nose is not so prominent, but the mouth is
wider and the ears are larger. Its chin is rounder, and has more small
hairs, and the side of the face is thinly covered with hair, commencing
about the middle of the ear, and these would seem to be signs of an
incipient beard and whiskers. The lower parts of the body are bare, and
the skin is white there.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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