to a very recent date, it was used in a totally different
sense from that in which he employs it.

For example, the second chapter of Purchas' work, which I have just
quoted, contains "A Description and Historicall Declaration of the
Golden Kingdom of Guinea, etc. etc. Translated from the Dutch, and
compared also with the Latin," wherein it is stated (p. 986) that--

"The River Gaboon lyeth about fifteen miles northward from Rio de Angra,
and eight miles northward from Cape de Lope Gonsalves (Cape Lopez),
and is right under the Equinoctial line, about fifteene miles from St.
Thomas, and is a great land, well and easily to be knowne. At the mouth
of the river there lieth a sand, three or foure fathoms deepe, whereon
it beateth mightily with the streame which runneth out of the river into
the sea. This river, in the mouth thereof, is at least four miles 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."

[Illustration: 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 [5], 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'.

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.

But