A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. by Various
page 53 of 358 (14%)
page 53 of 358 (14%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
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 (_Trogniger_, 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 conies. The _Mpongwe_ apellation 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, while 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 |
|