The Yorubans at once recognize the picture;
they call the anthropoid "Naki;" and they declare that, when it
seizes a man, it tears the fingers asunder. So M. du Chaillu
(chapter vi.) mentions, in the Mpongwe report, that the Njina
tears off the toe-nails and the finger-nails of his human
captives. We should not believe so scandalous an assertion
without detailed proof; it is hardly fair to make the innocent
biped as needlessly cruel as man. It is well known to the natives
of the Old Calabar River by the name of "Onion." In 1860, the
brothers Jules and Ambroise Poncet travelled with Dr. Peney to Ab
Kuka, the last of their stations near the head of the Luta Nzige
(Albert Nyanza) Lake, and Dr. Peney "brought back the hand of the
first gorilla which had been heard of" ("Ocean Highways," p. 482-
-February, 1874). The German Expedition (1873) reports Chicambo
to be a gorilla country; that the anthropoid is found one day's
journey from the Coast, and that the agent of that station has
killed five with his own hand. Mr. Thompson of Sherbro ("Palm
Land," chap, xiii.) says of the chimpanzee: "Some have been seen
as tall as a man, from five to seven feet high, and very
powerful.
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