for they have no
understanding to lay the wood together. They goe many together and kill
many negroes that travaile in the woods. Many times they fall upon the
elephants which come to feed where they be, and so beate them with their
clubbed fists, and pieces of wood, that they will runne roaring away
from them. Those Pongoes are never taken alive because they are so
strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them; but yet they take many of
their young ones with poisoned arrowes.

"The young Pongo hangeth on his mother's belly with his hands fast
clasped about her, so that when the countrie people kill any of the
females they take the young one, which hangeth fast upon his mother.

"When they die among themselves, they cover the dead with great heaps of
boughs and wood, which is commonly found in the forest." [4]

It does not appear difficult to identify the exact region of which
Battell speaks. Longo is doubtless the name of the place usually spelled
Loango on our maps. Mayombe still lies some nineteen leagues northward
from Loango, along the coast; and Cilongo or Kilonga, Manikesocke, and
Motimbas are yet registered by geographers. The Cape Negro of Battell,
however, cannot be the modern Cape Negro in 16 degrees S., since Loango
itself is in 4 degrees S. latitude. On the other hand, the "great river
called Banna" corresponds very well with the "Camma" and "Fernand Vas,"
of modern geographers, which form a great delta on this part of the
African coast.

Now this "Camma" country is situated about a degree and a-half south of
the Equator, while a few miles to the north of the line lies the Gaboon,
and a degree or so north of that, the Money River--both well known to
modern naturalists as localities where the largest of man-like Apes
has been obtained. Moreover, at the present day, the word Engeco, or
N'schego, is applied by the natives of these regions to the smaller of
the two great Apes which inhabit them; so that there can be no rational
doubt that Andrew Battell spoke of that which he knew of his own
knowledge, or, at any rate, by immediate report from the natives of
Western Africa. The "Engeco," however, is that "other monster" whose
nature Battell "forgot to relate," while the name "Pongo"--applied
to the animal whose characters and habits are so fully and carefully
described--seems to have died out, at least in its primitive form and
signification. Indeed, there is evidence that not only in Battell's
time, but up