Page:Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature.djvu/67

Rh "It should be borne in mind that my account is based upon the statements of the aborigines of that region (the Gaboon). In this connection, it may also be proper for me to remark, that having been a missionary resident for several years, studying, from habitual intercourse, the African mind and character, I felt myself prepared to discriminate and decide upon the probability of their statements. Besides, being familiar with the history and habits of its interesting congener (Trog. niger, Geoff.), I was able to separate their accounts of the two animals, which, having the same locality and a similarity of habit, are confounded in the minds of the mass, especially as but few—such as traders to the interior and huntsmen—have ever seen the animal in question.

The tribe from which our knowledge of the animal is derived, and whose territory forms its habitat, is the Mpongwe, occupying both banks of the River Gaboon, from its mouth to some fifty or sixty miles upward.…

If the word "Pongo" be of African origin, it is probably a corruption of the word Mpongwe, the name of the tribe on the banks of the Gaboon, and hence applied to the region they inhabit. Their local name for the Chimpanzee is Enché-eko, as near as it can be Anglicized, from which the common term "Jocko" probably comes. The Mpongwe appellation for its new congener is Engé-ena, prolonging the sound of the first vowel, and slightly sounding the second.

The habitat of the Engé-ena is the interior of lower Guinea, whilst that of the Enché-eko is nearer the seaboard.

Its height is about five feet; it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the Enché-eko; with age it becomes gray, which