Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was a French-American traveler, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern European outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas, and later the Pygmy people of central Africa.
In 1921 "Tarzan of the Apes", a hugely popular novel based on Du Chaillu’s stories was published.
He was sent in 1855 by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia on an African expedition. Until 1859, he explored the regions of West Africa in the neighborhood of the equator, gaining considerable knowledge of the delta of the Ogooué River and the estuary of the Gabon. During his travels from 1856 to 1859, he observed numerous gorillas, known to non-locals in prior centuries only from an unreliable and ambiguous report credited to Hanno the Navigator of Carthage in the 5th century BC and known to scientists in the preceding years only by a few skeletons. He brought back dead specimens and presented himself as the first white European person to have seen them.
He writes:
"My long residence in Africa gave me superior facilities for intercourse with the natives, and as my curiosity was greatly excited by their reports of this unknown monster, I determined to penetrate to its haunts and see with my own eyes. It has
been my fortune to be the first white man who can speak of the gorilla from personal knowledge ; and while my experience and observation prove that many of the actions reported of it are false and vain imaginings of the ignorant or the credulous travellers, I can also vouch that no description can exceed the
horror of its appearance, the ferocity of its attack, or the impish malignity of its nature."
One of the author's men was killed by a male gorilla and he himself narrowly survived an attack which he describes:
"When the animal became aware of our approach he at once came toward us, uttering a succession of the short bark-like yells which denote his rage, and which have a peculiarly horrible effect. They remind one only of the inarticulate ravings of a maniac. Balancing his huge heavy body with his arms, the animal came toward us, every few moments stopping to beat his breast, and throwing his head back to utter his tremendous roar. His fierce gloomy eyes glared upon us; the short hair was rapidly agitated, and the wrinkled face seemed contorted with rage. It was like a very devil, and I do not wonder at the superstitious terror with which the natives regard it."
Chaillu is an American, of French parentage. His father had been a trader near the mouth of the Gaboon River, where a large part of the son's childhood had been passed. His familiarity with the seacoast tribes and with their language, and his qualifications in other respects, have enabled him to prepare a volume which rivals in interest the late works of Livingstone, and Barth, and Burton, and Speke. Of the eight years which he passed in Africa, the volume gives an account only of his explorations in 1856, 7, 8 and 9. His first expedition began on the 18th of August, 1856, when ho started up the River Muni, with the intention of penetrating to the heart of the Sierra del Crystal. Another expedition was the exploration of the country around Cape Lopez. A third was in the Camma country, south of Cape Lopez; when he took up his head-quarters at Biagano, explored the river Ogobay, resided among the Bakalai, and hunted the gorilla and other great apes of the interior of Equatorial Africa. A fourth time he visited the interior. He says, that while in Africa he travelled—always on foot and without white company—eight thousand miles; shot, stuffed, and brought home over two thousand birds, of which more than sixty are new species, and killed upwards of one thousand quadrupeds, of which two hundred were stuffed and brought home.
This book originally published in 1868 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional imperfection.
In 1921 "Tarzan of the Apes", a hugely popular novel based on Du Chaillu’s stories was published.
He was sent in 1855 by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia on an African expedition. Until 1859, he explored the regions of West Africa in the neighborhood of the equator, gaining considerable knowledge of the delta of the Ogooué River and the estuary of the Gabon. During his travels from 1856 to 1859, he observed numerous gorillas, known to non-locals in prior centuries only from an unreliable and ambiguous report credited to Hanno the Navigator of Carthage in the 5th century BC and known to scientists in the preceding years only by a few skeletons. He brought back dead specimens and presented himself as the first white European person to have seen them.
He writes:
"My long residence in Africa gave me superior facilities for intercourse with the natives, and as my curiosity was greatly excited by their reports of this unknown monster, I determined to penetrate to its haunts and see with my own eyes. It has
been my fortune to be the first white man who can speak of the gorilla from personal knowledge ; and while my experience and observation prove that many of the actions reported of it are false and vain imaginings of the ignorant or the credulous travellers, I can also vouch that no description can exceed the
horror of its appearance, the ferocity of its attack, or the impish malignity of its nature."
One of the author's men was killed by a male gorilla and he himself narrowly survived an attack which he describes:
"When the animal became aware of our approach he at once came toward us, uttering a succession of the short bark-like yells which denote his rage, and which have a peculiarly horrible effect. They remind one only of the inarticulate ravings of a maniac. Balancing his huge heavy body with his arms, the animal came toward us, every few moments stopping to beat his breast, and throwing his head back to utter his tremendous roar. His fierce gloomy eyes glared upon us; the short hair was rapidly agitated, and the wrinkled face seemed contorted with rage. It was like a very devil, and I do not wonder at the superstitious terror with which the natives regard it."
Chaillu is an American, of French parentage. His father had been a trader near the mouth of the Gaboon River, where a large part of the son's childhood had been passed. His familiarity with the seacoast tribes and with their language, and his qualifications in other respects, have enabled him to prepare a volume which rivals in interest the late works of Livingstone, and Barth, and Burton, and Speke. Of the eight years which he passed in Africa, the volume gives an account only of his explorations in 1856, 7, 8 and 9. His first expedition began on the 18th of August, 1856, when ho started up the River Muni, with the intention of penetrating to the heart of the Sierra del Crystal. Another expedition was the exploration of the country around Cape Lopez. A third was in the Camma country, south of Cape Lopez; when he took up his head-quarters at Biagano, explored the river Ogobay, resided among the Bakalai, and hunted the gorilla and other great apes of the interior of Equatorial Africa. A fourth time he visited the interior. He says, that while in Africa he travelled—always on foot and without white company—eight thousand miles; shot, stuffed, and brought home over two thousand birds, of which more than sixty are new species, and killed upwards of one thousand quadrupeds, of which two hundred were stuffed and brought home.
This book originally published in 1868 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional imperfection.
