[ Gorillas and Chimpanzis. ] 169
The greatest of these two monsters is called Pongo [Mpungu] in their language, and the lesser is called Engeco. This Pongo is in all proportions like a man, but that he is more like a giant in stature than a man; for he is very tall, and hath a man’s face, hollow-eyed, with long hair upon his brows. His face and ears are without hair, and his hands also. His body is full of hair, but not very thick, and it is of a dunnish colour. He differeth not from a man but in his legs, for they have no calf. He goeth always upon his legs, and carryeth his hands clasped upon the nape of his neck when he goeth upon the ground. They sleep in the trees, and build shelters from the rain. They feed upon fruit they find in the woods and upon nuts, for they eat no kind of flesh. They cannot speak, and have no more understanding than a beast.
The people of the country, when they travel in the woods, make fires when they sleep in the night. And in the morning, when they are gone, the Pongoes will come and sit about the fire till it goeth out, for they have no understanding to lay the wood together. They go many together, and kill many negroes that travel in the woods. Many times they fall upon the elephants, which come to feed where they be, and so beat them with their clubbed fists and pieces of wood that they will run 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 arrows. The young Pongo hangeth on his mother’s belly, with his hands clasped fast about her, so that when the country 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 forests.
[Purchas adds in a marginal note:
“He told me in a conference with him that one of these Pongos took a negro boy of his, which lived a month with them, for they hurt not those which they surprise at unawares, except they look on them, which he [the boy] avoided. He said, their height was like a man’s, but their bigness twice as great. I saw the negro boy.
“What the other monster [the Engeco] should be he hath forgotten to relate, and these papers came to my hand since his death, which otherwise, in my often conferences, I might have learned. Perhaps he meaneth the Pigmy Pongo-killers mentioned.”]