Note 169 — THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ANDREW BATTELL OF LEIGH IN ESSEX, SENT BY THE PORTUGALS PRISONER TO ANGOLA, WHO LIVED THERE, AND IN THE ADJOINING REGIONS, NEAR EIGHTEEN YEARS.

The Mpungu is the gorilla. For Engeco (printed Encego in the earlier editions) we ought to read Nsiku, the native name for the chimpanzi, a larger variety of which is known as Chimpenso (Pechuel-Loesche, Loango Expedition, vol. iii, p. 248). P. Du Chaillu, the first European to kill a gorilla in his native haunts (Adventures in Equatorial Africa), declares Battell’s stories to be mere traveller’s tales, “untrue of any of the great apes of Africa.” Sir R. F. Burton (Two Trips to Gorilla Land, vol. i, p. 240) suggests that as Battell had not seen a gorilla, he may have confounded gorillas with bushmen.