broad; but when you are about the Iland called 'Pongo', it is not above
two miles broad.... On both sides the river there standeth many
trees.... The Iland called 'Pongo', which hath a monstrous high hill."

FIG 2.--The Orang of Tulpius, 1641.

The French naval officers, whose letters are appended to the late M.
Isidore Geoff. Saint Hilaire's excellent essay on the Gorilla*, 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'.

[footnote] *'Archives du Museum', tome x.

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.