1300.K.S.

DU CHAIIMPS EQUA_TGRIAli- AFRICA.°

Tars volume will not disappoint the unusual capectations has excited. The region traversed by its author has not, indeed, 'the peculiar fascination of that which still encloses the mysterious sources of the 'Nile, but, except in this respect, it is not surpassed in the strikin, character of its natural features, by any, portion of Africa with -Which the researches of travellers have as set made us ac-

quainted ; while the strange and hitherto .unknown animals Which dispute with scarcely less extraordinary human inhabitants, its an- tamed solitudes, invest it with an interest to which no other portion of the globe at present affords a parallel. Unfortunately the,qualil- cations which make a good traveller do -not necessarily enable him to describe what helms seen, and we could point to more than one dull and confused volume of African exploration which has done little more than furnish materials for further condensation by more rac- tised hands, and of which, owing to its bad execution, the p has been by no means commensurate with the advantage of uts sub- ject. Let us hasten to say thatthe literary merit ofMr;DuChallbes volume is all that could possibly be wished, and that in this large volume of 470 pages we have not found one which we were inclined to skip. The care with which'he kept his journal from day to day during his progress, a task than which his scarcely possible to con- ceive anything more trying, has.given his work a -freshness and live- liness of detail which is of the very highest value. We seem to get the impression of all he witnessed with the same clearness with which it passed through'his mind, and his judgment 'in the selection and arrangement Of his materials cannot be too 'highly praised. 'The usual fault of travellers who are inexperienced as writers, he has entirely .avoided—that of following too servilely the course of a diary, and presenting various minute particulars which ought to be brought together in the same scattered way in which they were al first picked up. In the main portion of the book he has given the narrative of his actual progress, with the stirring episodes with which it was enlivened, bat on other subjects, such as those of climate, of govern- ment, and the slave system, of the native superstitions, of the cus- toms of the more remarkable tribes, and of some of the principal animals he encountered, lie has classified his observations in separate chapters, and has thus been enabled to steer clear of much useless repetition.

Those who look on a map of Africa will Observe on its western coast the mouths of several rivers which empty themselves into the sea within one or two degrees of the Equator. It was through the country watered by these streams and their tributaries that the jour- neys of Mr. Da Chaillu extended; his respective limits being about one hundred miles north, and one hundred and fifty south of the line ; while the distance to which he, penetrated into the interior seems to have been about three hundred and twenty miles, which is about one- sixth of the diameter of the continent at that point. His explora- tions were accomplished in five or six distinct trips, after each of which he returned to the coast to make a fresh start on the next oc- casion, a plan necessitated by the limited supplies of food to 'he ob- tained, and the impossibility tif taking enough clothes to stand for any time the wear and tear of the almost impenetrable jungle.

On his first journey, which is interesting enough in his account,

but less remarkable than some of his subsequent ones, it is not re- quisite to dwell, except to draw attention to the peculiarities of African commerce. This is conducted on a system which forms almost a complete bar to the development of the resources of the country, and until some more effectual way Of getting . at them than at present'exists is opened, neither Christianity nor civilization will have much chance of penetrating more than a few miles inland. 'The rivers are the highways of trade, and their banks are possessed by several different tribes, through each of which every article 'has to pass before it can reach the hands of the captain who wants to buy it. 'The finder of a tusk two hundred miles from the coast 'is not allowed to take it himself to market ; he must transmit it through all the ,people who lie between, each of whom takes a per centage of the profit. The system is not .only one Of commission'bat of 'trust ; neither the first, nor any succeeding middleman, having the slightest security for the goods from those to whom they are passed on; so that if the various per centages take all the profit, -as is frequently the case, the unfortunate owner has to go without.altogether. Ile never sees the white trader who is ultimately to receive his :merchan- dise, and is easily made to believe the most ;timid tales of his cruelty and fraud. Neither is honesty the hest policy, for if a man is shrewd enough to get more than is considered his fair share of trade, by means of fair dealing, he is " blacked" as we should say, and may, perhaps, pay the penalty with his life. The white men also throw much temptation in the away of the natives by entrusting them with large quantities of goods on barter, which they sometimes keep till the trader is tired out, or suffering from the climate, and thenput him off with a very slight equivalent. The whqje system is utterly disorganized, and is likely to remain so till the merchants themselves succeed in reach' g the 'head quarters whence the produce comes, which it is possible that /dr. Du Chaillu's exploits may now show them how to acccomplish.

Our author's next journey was to a remarkable range of .moun- tains extending north and south about sixty miles from the coast,

• • Ea./durations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa; with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Chase of the Gorilla, Crocodile, Leopold, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and other Animals. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. Withilap and Illustrations. (John Murray,)

called the Sierra del Crystal, beyond which live the Fans, a tribe as to whose cannibal propensities he wished to satisfy himself. His doubts were set at rest the moment he entered one of their villages, for he met a woman carrying a piece of a human thigh, and saw human bones lying about in all directions, a body having just been divided. The diet seemed to agree with them, for they were the finest set of negroes he met with in the interior, and in the way their settlements were gradually extending towards the coast there was perceptibly a more enterprising spirit than is shown by any other tribe. They are also very warlike, and excellent workers of the iron which, in the shape of ore is found all over their country, and which, by a tedious process, they work up into a much better article than that which comes to them from Europe. Their cannibalism is the most repulsive form of that practice we have ever heard of, for they eat the bodies of people who have died of disease, buy the dead of other tribes, and, like veritable ghouls, have been known to steal freshly buried bodies from the cemetery, and cook and eat them, or smoke and carry them away into the woods. Yet, notwithstanding this horrible custom, Mr. Du Chaffin thought them the most pro- mising of all the tribes he met with ; they have courage and ingenuity, and treated him with unvarying hospitality and kindness. The Fans were the most remarkable of all the tribes visited by Mr. Du Chaffin, but he came in contact with a vast variety of others, whose characteristics he minutely describes. For these we must in general refer the reader to the volume itself. The impression left on us by what he says about them is that either his tact, firmness, and management was much greater than that of any traveller except Livingstone, or that the natives of the Western coast are easier to deal with when they are fully convinced that no interference with their trading monopoly is intended. In no case did the traveller meet with any gratuitous molestation, and among several tribes who had never seen a white man he was considered as the " spirit " who made all the guns and beads which were brought to Africa. He generally met with the greatest hospitality, was tenderly nursed in several attacks of fever, and on more than one occasion left the whole of his property in the charge of natives with perfect safety. The men whom he employed to assist him in hunting and to tarry the immense amount of luggage, provisions, &c., which he always had to take with him, acted with entire fidelity and devotion to his mterests. And nothing appears to have delayed his progress in either of the directions in which he penetrated furthest, but the natural obstacles of the country—the thick forests, the constant difficulty of obtaining food, the gradual exhaustion of means of barter, and his disinclina- tion to trust himself among unknown tribes with insufficient supplies and diminished ammunition. Mr. Du Chaffin says, in his preface, that one of his objects was to ascertain whether any location could be found suited for a missionary station. He does not state the conclusion at which he arrived on this point, but from his account of the Ashira, a tribe inhabiting a large and fertile prairie about a hundred and twenty miles from the coast, disposed to regard the white man with great veneration, not more superstitious than most of the natives, and possessing very great skill in textile manufac- tures, we should imagine that among these, if anywhere, might be found the opening required.

The most interesting part of Mr. du Chaillu's discoveries relates, however, not to the men, but to the beasts—apparently so closely related to them. He met with three new species of apes, two of which are very remarkable indeed; and has enlarged and most materially corrected our knowledge of another, probably the most ex- traordinary kind existing. One of the two former is the "kooloo- kamba,' which in outward appearance is more like the human species than any of its genus yet known to naturalists. Its skull has not the usual receding shape, but is domical in form, while the facial angle is to that of the chimpanzee as 57 to 54—the facial angle of the negro being 75, and of the Caucasian skull 86. Its cranial capacity is greater than that of any other ape; its face is bare, its muzzle less prominent, and fringed by something like whiskers. The ears are very like those of man, but their position, which is ]sigh, dimi- nishes the resemblance. Mr. du Chaffin was at once struck with its likeness to an Esquimaux or a Chinese ; but the animal is extremely rare, and he was able only to procure one specimen. Another kind, also first discovered by him, is the "Nieshgo-mbouve," an ape which builds for itself a shelter in trees, woven of leaves, in the exact shape of an umbrella, very neatly made, so as to turn the rain, which, as it must be renewed, probably, every other week, shows that the animal is of rather industrious habits. At night this ape climbs up his tree, seats himself on a branch, with his head in his canopy, and reposes securely by throwing one arm round the trunk. He is docile when caught young, and Mr. du Chaffin succeeded in taming one, which be came much attached to him, and a general favourite, but died after a few months.

The great feature of the book, however—and we may add, one of the principal lions of the season—is the Gorilla; probably the most savage, terrible, and untamable brute anywhere known, and yet pre- senting a portentous resemblance to man. Mr. du Chaffin, met with the gorilla in mostaof his journeys, his first encounter with one being on his way to the country of the Fans. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the name of the gorilla is by no means new, though we have never heard much about it till lately. In the voyage of Hanno, which took place, at any rate, some time before the destruction of Carthage, the geographer mentions that he passed an island containing creatures "with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called gorillas ; ' that the males escaped by their great agility, climbing rocks and trees, but that he " took three women, who bit and tore" so much that it was necessary to kill them. Their skins were taken to Car.

thage, and, as Pliny relates, were hung in the temple of Juno, up to the capture of the city by the Romans. Later writers, one of

whom is quoted in Furchas's Pilgrims, evidently not being able to make anything of the name gorilla, changed it to "gorgons," which at once gave the story a mythical aspect. In the dis- sertation by Dodwell, prefixed. to Hudson's "Geoangraphio, does noreos't'

—which Mr. du Chaffin, from his remarks on no, seem to have seen—the meaning of the "gorgons" is discussed at great length, and Dodwell comes to the conclusion that it is a cor- ruption of the word gorilla mentioned by Hanno, which was pro_ bably the native term for the creature caught by his sailors. There

can, of course, be no doubt that Hanno picked up the word some-

where on the coast of Africa, but Mr. du Chaillu argues that the animal itself could not be the same as that now existing under the name. The gorilla never runs away, especially when in company with its female ; nor would it, he thinks, be possible to take even a female gorilla alive. It also consumes so mach vegetable food that no considerable number could have found sustenance on such an island as Hanno mentions.

The few modern accounts of the gorilla before Mr. Du Chaillu are equally unveracious. It does not build houses of leaves, and sit on the roof; it does not carry off native women; it does not attack the elephant and beat him to death with clubs; nor—as we find stated and pictorially. illustrated in Mr. Gosse's "Romance of Nature "—does it sit in a tree by the wayside andd up unsus- picious passengers to choke them to death. But though all these stories are fables, no description, says Mr. Du Chaffin, can exceed the horror of its appearance, the ferocity of its attack, or the impish malignity of its nature. It is not a carnivorous animal, but eats enormously of its vegetable food ; it is not gregarious, but generally found in pairs; nor does it usually live in trees, though the young may sometimes do so for safety. It avoids the hunter as long as it only hears him, but when they at last come face to face, the .male animal, at least, never runs away. Probably he may be found sitting at the foot of a tree, the female feedino. near. She gives the alarm, and runs off with loud cries. Then her mate, sating for a moment with a savage frown on his face, "slowly rises to his feet, and, looking with glowing and malign eyes at the intruders, begins to beat his breast, and, lifting up his round head, utters his frightful roar. This begins with several sharp barks, like an enraged or mad dog, whereupon ensues a long, deeply gutters', rolling roar, con- tinued for over a minute, and which, doubled and multiplied by the resounding echoes of the forest, fills the hunter's ears like the deep rolling thunder of an approaching storm." The brute advances by short stages, stopping every now and then to roar and beat his vast chest with his paws, which make it resound like a great drum. His walk, from the disproportionate shortness of the hind legs to the heavy body, is a waddle, which lie balances by swinging his long, thick, muscular arms. " His deep-set grey eyes sparkle with gloomy ma- lignity ; the features are contorted in hideous wrinkles ; and the slight, sharply-cut lips, drawn up, reveal the long fangs and the powerful jaws, in which a human hmb would be crushed as a biscuit" The experienced hunter reserves his fire till the animal is about six yards off, for if he misses, it is impossible for him to escape. He must stand still and battle for his life—generally the poorest chance—for a single blow of the gorilla's heavy, crooked paw, breaks his breast-bone or tears out his bowels ; and no weapon which a man can wield can resist for an instant his enormous strength. On one oc- casion, when Mr. Du Chaillu's party were out hunting, one of them went off alone in a direction where he thought he could find a gorilla :

We bad been about an hour separated when Gambo and I heard a gun fired but a little way from us, and presently another. We were already on our way to the spot where we hoped to see a gorilla slain, when the forest began to resound with the most terrific roars. Gambo seized my arms in great agitation, and we hurried on, both filled with a dreadful and sickening alarm. We had not gone far when our worst fears were realized. The poor brave fellow who had gone off alone was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, and I thought, at first, quite dead. His bowels were protruding through the lacerated abdomen. Beside him lay his gun. The stock was broken, and the barrel was bent and flattened. It bore plainly the marks of the gorilla's teeth.

We picked him up, and I dressed his wounds as well as I could with rags torn from my clothes. When I had given him a little brandy to drink he came to himself, and was able, but with great difficulty, to speak. He said that he had met the gorilla suddenly and face to face, and that it had not attempted to escape. It was, he said, a huge male, and seemed very savage. It was in a very gloomy part of the wood, and the darkness, I suppose, made him miss. He said he took good aim, and fired when the beast was only eight yards off. The ball merely wounded it in the side. It at once began beating its breasts, and with the greatest rage advanced upon him.

To run away was impossible. He would have been caught in the jungle before he had gone a dozen steps. He stood his ground, and as quickly as he could reloaded, his gun. Just as he raised it to fire the gorilla dashed it out of his hands, the gun going off in the fall; and then in an instant, and with a terrible roar, the animal gave him a tre- mendous blow with its immense open paw, frightfully lacerating the abdomen, and with this single blow layingbare part of the intestines. As he sank, bleeding, to the ground, the monster seized the gun, and the poor hunter thought he would have his brains dashed out with it. But the gorilla seemed to have looked upon this also as an enemy, and in his rage almost flattened the barrel between his strong jaws.

When we came upon the ground the gorilla was gone. This is their mode when attacked—to strike one or two blows' and then leave the victims of their rage on the ground and go off into the woods.

The man died, but his probable destroyer was killed a day or two afterwards.

We have not left ourselves space to mention several other strange and formidable creatures which Mr. Da Chaffin encountered, among which, venomous insects were the most annoying; but he had much sport, and sometimes not a little danger, in pursuit of all the animals

mentioned in his title-page. In his quest of striking natural scenes he was less fortunate. He came within sound of a cataract on one of the largest rivers, which, from the aspect of the country through which it ran, must probably be one of the grandest anywhere exist- ing; • but his boat was too frail to face the rapids, and the land journey too destitute of supplies to be attempted. He was equally unsuc- cessful in attempting to ascend a mountain about twelve thousand feet high ; from which enterprise, however, nothing turned him back but sheer starvation and the complete failure of his shoes. That he should ever have tried shows unusual resolution under the circum- stances. Altogether, we cannot too strongly express our admiration of the undaunted pluck and resolution which carried him to the points actually accomplished in other directions. He performed the whole distance, eight thousand miles, on foot, and the amount of fever he went through may be judged of by the fact that he consumed in four years fourteen ounces of quinine.