Background
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu was born on July 31, 1831 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. His father was the agent for Messrs. Oppenheim of Paris at the Gaboon on the west coast of Africa.
(“The adventures of Du Chaillu were vastly more hazardous ...)
“The adventures of Du Chaillu were vastly more hazardous and interesting than those of either Livingstone or Stanley.” - The Illustrated American A hugely popular novel based on Du Chaillu’s true stories of African exploration was published in 1921 under the title "Tarzan of the Apes." When only a boy of eighteen Du Chaillu sailed from New York to West Africa, whence he made his way into the interior unattended by any such army and retinue of soldiers as assisted Stanley in his exploits. After years in the heart of Africa Du Chaillu returned to this country with unheard of stories of adventures among exotic wild beasts and tribes. Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was an American traveler, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern European outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas, and later the Pygmy people of central Africa. He was sent in 1855 by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia on an African expedition. Until 1859, he explored the regions of West Africa in the neighborhood of the equator, gaining considerable knowledge of the delta of the Ogooué River and the estuary of the Gabon. During his travels from 1856 to 1859, he observed numerous gorillas, known to non-locals in prior centuries only from an unreliable and ambiguous report credited to Hanno the Navigator of Carthage in the 5th century BC and known to scientists in the preceding years only by a few skeletons. He brought back dead specimens and presented himself as the first white European person to have seen them. Du Chaillu wrote about his African adventures in his 1871 book “Stories of the Gorilla Country.” In writing about a new species of hominid Du Chaillu states: " I happened to look up at a high tree which we were passing, and saw a most singular shelter or home built in its branches. I immediately stopped and asked Okabi why the hunters slept in that way in the woods. Okabi laughed, after looking at me quizzically, and then he told me that no man had ever built that shelter. He said that it was made by a kind of man of the woods, called nshiego mbouve", an animal which had no hair on the top of its head. I really thought Okabi was joking. An animal—a man-monkey—with no hair on the top of his head?—a bald-headed ape?" In writing of a close encounter with a gorilla, Du Chaillu states: "Suddenly an immense gorilla advanced out of the wood straight toward us, and gave vent, as he came up, to a terrible howl of rage, as much as to say," I am tired of being pursued, and will face you." It was a lone male, the kind which are always most ferocious. This fellow made the woods resound with his roar, which is really an awful sound, resembling very much the rolling and muttering of distant thunder. . . ." Du Chaillu was eventually able to capture live species of gorilla which he tamed but which was unfortunately not immune from the lure of hard drink as Du Chaillu relates: “He showed an extraordinary fondness for strong drink. Whenever a negro had palm wine Tommy was sure to know it. He had a decided taste for Scotch ale, of which I had a few bottles, and he even begged for brandy. Indeed, his last exploit was with a brandy bottle. One day, before going out to the hunt, I had carelessly left the bottle on my chest. The little rascal stole in and seized it; and, being unable to get out the cork, in some way he broke the bottle. When I returned, after some hours' absence, I found my precious bottle broken in pieces! It was the last; and to an African traveler brandy is as indispensable as quinine. Master Tommy was coiled up on the floor amid the fragments in a state of maudlin drunkenness.” “Stories of the Gorilla Country” contains descriptions of marvelous adventures and cannot fail to entertain.
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Gorilla-Country-Belloni-Chaillu-ebook/dp/B06XBP2WMC?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B06XBP2WMC
(Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was a French-Ameri...)
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was a French-American traveler, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern European outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas, and later the Pygmy people of central Africa. In 1921 "Tarzan of the Apes", a hugely popular novel based on Du Chaillu’s stories was published. He was sent in 1855 by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia on an African expedition. Until 1859, he explored the regions of West Africa in the neighborhood of the equator, gaining considerable knowledge of the delta of the Ogooué River and the estuary of the Gabon. During his travels from 1856 to 1859, he observed numerous gorillas, known to non-locals in prior centuries only from an unreliable and ambiguous report credited to Hanno the Navigator of Carthage in the 5th century BC and known to scientists in the preceding years only by a few skeletons. He brought back dead specimens and presented himself as the first white European person to have seen them. He writes: "My long residence in Africa gave me superior facilities for intercourse with the natives, and as my curiosity was greatly excited by their reports of this unknown monster, I determined to penetrate to its haunts and see with my own eyes. It has been my fortune to be the first white man who can speak of the gorilla from personal knowledge ; and while my experience and observation prove that many of the actions reported of it are false and vain imaginings of the ignorant or the credulous travellers, I can also vouch that no description can exceed the horror of its appearance, the ferocity of its attack, or the impish malignity of its nature." One of the author's men was killed by a male gorilla and he himself narrowly survived an attack which he describes: "When the animal became aware of our approach he at once came toward us, uttering a succession of the short bark-like yells which denote his rage, and which have a peculiarly horrible effect. They remind one only of the inarticulate ravings of a maniac. Balancing his huge heavy body with his arms, the animal came toward us, every few moments stopping to beat his breast, and throwing his head back to utter his tremendous roar. His fierce gloomy eyes glared upon us; the short hair was rapidly agitated, and the wrinkled face seemed contorted with rage. It was like a very devil, and I do not wonder at the superstitious terror with which the natives regard it." Chaillu is an American, of French parentage. His father had been a trader near the mouth of the Gaboon River, where a large part of the son's childhood had been passed. His familiarity with the seacoast tribes and with their language, and his qualifications in other respects, have enabled him to prepare a volume which rivals in interest the late works of Livingstone, and Barth, and Burton, and Speke. Of the eight years which he passed in Africa, the volume gives an account only of his explorations in 1856, 7, 8 and 9. His first expedition began on the 18th of August, 1856, when ho started up the River Muni, with the intention of penetrating to the heart of the Sierra del Crystal. Another expedition was the exploration of the country around Cape Lopez. A third was in the Camma country, south of Cape Lopez; when he took up his head-quarters at Biagano, explored the river Ogobay, resided among the Bakalai, and hunted the gorilla and other great apes of the interior of Equatorial Africa. A fourth time he visited the interior. He says, that while in Africa he travelled—always on foot and without white company—eight thousand miles; shot, stuffed, and brought home over two thousand birds, of which more than sixty are new species, and killed upwards of one thousand quadrupeds, of which two hundred were stuffed and brought home. This book originally published in 1868 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional imperfection.
https://www.amazon.com/Explorations-Adventures-Equatorial-crocodile-hippopotamus-ebook/dp/B018CUX3YO?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B018CUX3YO
Paul Belloni Du Chaillu was born on July 31, 1831 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. His father was the agent for Messrs. Oppenheim of Paris at the Gaboon on the west coast of Africa.
Du Chaillu received his education in a Jesuit Mission school. He showed a great fondness for natural history and early became acquainted with the native languages and customs.
In 1852 Du Chaillu came to the United States and while here secured the support of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences for an exploring expedition into Central Africa. This trip which he undertook in 1856 lasted nearly four years, and in that time he traveled about 8, 000 miles through tropical Africa.
In 1861, two years after his return, he published an account of his journey under the title, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. This was at first received with ridicule and distrust and led to many a bitter controversy among scientists. One by one, however, Du Chaillu’s discoveries were confirmed by later travelers, and his reputation was established. But Du Chaillu was not satisfied with this vindication, and in 1863 he returned to Africa to prove some of his previous statements by scientific observations. His experiences of this two-year trip, including the story of his discovery of the pygmies of the Black Forest, are told in A Journey to Ashango Land, brought out in 1867.
For the next few years he made his home in New York and devoted himself to lecturing and writing upon equatorial Africa. Chief among the books of this period are: Stories of the Gorilla Country (1868), Wild Life Under the Equator (1869), Lost in the Jungle (1869), My Apingi Kingdom (1870), and The Country of the Dwarfs (1871). All of these works are very readable and contain interesting, lively descriptions which indicate a keen sense of observation on the part of the author. In 1871, he went to Sweden and Norway, where, after studying the people and their institutions for more than five years, he began writing The Land of the Midnight Sun, published in 1881. This was followed in 1889 by The Viking Age, his most ambitious work. His later years were spent quietly in writing and study; but in 1901 he again felt the wanderlust and journeyed to Russia to make a survey similar to the one that he had conducted in Scandinavia thirty years before. It was while on this trip that his death occurred at St. Petersburg.
(“The adventures of Du Chaillu were vastly more hazardous ...)
(Paul Belloni Du Chaillu ( 1831 – 1903) was a French-Ameri...)
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