Evidence as to Man's Place in NatureHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
The French naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late M.
Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire's excellent essay on the Gorilla [5], note
in similar terms the width of the Gaboon, the trees that line its banks
down to the water's edge, and the strong current that sets out of it.
They describe two islands in its estuary;--one low, called Perroquet;
the other high, presenting three conical hills, called Coniquet; and
one of them, M. Franquet, expressly states that, formerly, the Chief of
Coniquet was called 'Meni-Pongo', meaning thereby Lord of 'Pongo'; and
that the 'N'Pongues' (as, in agreement with Dr. Savage, he affirms
the natives call themselves) term the estuary of the Gaboon itself
'N'Pongo'.
It is so easy, in dealing with savages, to misunderstand their
applications of words to things, that one is at first inclined to
suspect Battell of having confounded the name of this region, where his
"greater monster" still abounds, with the name of the animal itself. But
he is so right about other matters (including the name of the "lesser
monster") that one is loth to suspect the old traveller of error; and,
on the other hand, we shall find that a voyager of a hundred years'
later date speaks of the name "Boggoe," as applied to a great Ape, by
the inhabitants of quite another part of Africa--Sierra Leone.
But I must leave this question to be settled by philologers and
travellers; and I should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for
the curious part played by this word 'Pongo'in the later history of the
man-like Apes.
The generation which succeeded Battell saw the first of the man-like
Apes which was ever brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit
found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' 'Observationes
Medicae', published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to
what he calls 'Satyrus indicus', "called by the Indians Orang-autang or
Man-of-the-Woods, and by the Africans Quoias Morrou." He gives a very
good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal,
"nostra memoria ex Angola delatum," presented to Frederick Henry Prince
of Orange. Tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and
as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with black
hair. It is plainly a young Chimpanzee.
In the meanwhile, the existence of other, Asiatic, man-like Apes became
known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. Thus Bontius (1658)
gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure of an
animal which he calls "Orang-outang"; and though he says "vidi Ego cujus
effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see Fig. 6 for Hoppius' copy
of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect, and
with proportions and feet wholly human. The judicious English anatomist,
Tyson, was justified in saying of this description by Bontius, "I
confess I do mistrust the whole representation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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