Stories of the Gorilla Country

“The adventures of Du Chaillu were vastly more hazardous and interesting than those of either Livingstone or Stanley.” - The Illustrated American

A hugely popular novel based on Du Chaillu’s true stories of African exploration was published in 1921 under the title "Tarzan of the Apes."

When only a boy of eighteen Du Chaillu sailed from New York to West Africa, whence he made his way into the interior unattended by any such army and retinue of soldiers as assisted Stanley in his exploits. After years in the heart of Africa Du Chaillu returned to this country with unheard of stories of adventures among exotic wild beasts and tribes.

Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was an 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.

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.

Du Chaillu wrote about his African adventures in his 1871 book “Stories of the Gorilla Country.”

In writing about a new species of hominid Du Chaillu states:

" I happened to look up at a high tree which we were passing, and saw a most singular shelter or home built in its branches. I immediately stopped and asked Okabi why the hunters slept in that way in the woods. Okabi laughed, after looking at me quizzically, and then he told me that no man had ever built that shelter. He said that it was made by a kind of man of the woods, called nshiego mbouve", an animal which had no hair on the top of its head. I really thought Okabi was joking. An animal—a man-monkey—with no hair on the top of his head?—a bald-headed ape?"

In writing of a close encounter with a gorilla, Du Chaillu states:

"Suddenly an immense gorilla advanced out of the wood straight toward us, and gave vent, as he came up, to a terrible howl of rage, as much as to say," I am tired of being pursued, and will face you." It was a lone male, the kind which are always most ferocious. This fellow made the woods resound with his roar, which is really an awful sound, resembling very much the rolling and muttering of distant thunder. . . ."

Du Chaillu was eventually able to capture live species of gorilla which he tamed but was unfortunately not immune from the lure of hard drink as Du Chaillu relates:

“He showed an extraordinary fondness for strong drink. Whenever a negro had palm wine Tommy was sure to know it. He had a decided taste for Scotch ale, of which I had a few bottles, and he even begged for brandy. Indeed, his last exploit was with a brandy bottle. One day, before going out to the hunt, I had carelessly left the bottle on my chest. The little rascal stole in and seized it; and, being unable to get out the cork, in some way he broke the bottle. When I returned, after some hours' absence, I found my precious bottle broken in pieces! It was the last; and to an African traveler brandy is as indispensable as quinine. Master Tommy was coiled up on the floor amid the fragments in a state of maudlin drunkenness.”

“Stories of the Gorilla Country” contains descriptions of marvelous adventures and cannot fail to entertain.