notice, the oldest trustworthy and definite accounts of any animal of this kind date from the 17th century, and are due to an Englishman.
The first edition of that most amusing old book, "Purchas his Pilgrimage," was published in 1613, and therein are to be found many references to the statements of one whom Purchas terms "Andrew Battell (my neere neighbour, dwelling at Leigh in Essex) who served under Manuel Silvera Perera, Governor under the King of Spaine, at his city of Saint Paul, and with him went farre into the countrey of Angola;" and again, "my friend, Andrew Battle, who lived in the kingdom of Congo many yeares," and who, "upon some quarell betwixt the Portugals (among whom he was a sergeant of a band) and him, lived eight or nine moneths in the woods." From this weather-beaten old soldier, Purchas was amazed to hear "of a kinde of Great Apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape.[1] They lived on such wilde fruits as the trees and woods yielded, and in the night time lodged on the trees."
This extract is, however, less detailed and clear in its statements than a passage in the third chapter of the second part of another work—"Purchas his Pilgrimes," published in 1625, by the same author—which has been often, though hardly ever quite rightly, cited. The chapter is entitled, "The strange adventures of Andrew Battell, of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adioning regions neere eighteene yeeres." And the sixth section of this chapter is
- ↑ "Except this that their legges had no calves."—[Ed. 1626.] And in a marginal note, "These great apes are called Pongo's."
