I must leave this question to be settled by philologers and
travellers; and I should hardly have dwelt so long upon it except for
the curious part played by this word 'Pongo' in the later history of the
man-like Apes.
The generation which succeeded Battell saw the first of the man-like
Apes which was ever brought to Europe, or, at any rate, whose visit
found a historian. In the third book of Tulpius' 'Observationes
Medicae', published in 1641, the 56th chapter or section is devoted to
what he calls 'Satyrus indicus', "called by the Indians Orang-autang or
Man-of-the-Woods, and by the Africans Quoias Morrou." He gives a very
good figure, evidently from the life, of the specimen of this animal,
"nostra memoria ex Angola delatum," presented to Frederick Henry Prince
of Orange. Tulpius says it was as big as a child of three years old, and
as stout as one of six years: and that its back was covered with black
hair. It is plainly a young Chimpanzee.
In the meanwhile, the existence of other, Asiatic, man-like Apes became
known, but at first in a very mythical fashion. Thus Bontius (1658)
gives an altogether fabulous and ridiculous account and figure of an
animal which he calls "Orang-outang"; and though he says "vidi Ego cujus
effigiem hic exhibeo," the said effigies (see Figure 6 for Hoppius' copy
of it) is nothing but a very hairy woman of rather comely aspect, and
with proportions and feet wholly human. The judicious English anatomist,
Tyson, was justified in saying of this description by Bontius, "I
confess I do mistrust the whole representation."
It is to the last mentioned writer, and his coadjutor Cowper, that we
owe the first account of a man-like ape which has any pretensions
to scientific accuracy and completeness. The treatise entitled,
"'Orang-outang, sive Homo Sylvestris'; or the Anatomy of a Pygmie
compared with that of a 'Monkey', an 'Ape', and a 'Man'," published by
the Royal Society in 1699, is, indeed, a work of remarkable merit, and
has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. This
"Pygmie," Tyson tells us "was brought from Angola, in Africa; but was
first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a
coal-black colour and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all
four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the
ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when
weak and had not strength enough to support its body."--"From
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