Word: chaillu
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...shifted from man-eating lions and placed upon the heads of sensationalist writers who seek to debunk the country of every lingering element of charm. But to those of us who first heard a leopard snarl or the Ashango tomtoms beat in the pages of a Paul Du Chaillu book, Africa will remain the magic land forever. Now appears for the first time a life account of the man who had this ability of bewitching his readers. When energetic Paul submerged himself in the forests of the Gabon, arm-chair expeditions were hardly conceivable. No white man before...
After the other aspects of Du Chaillu's discoveries are forgotten and the spell of his personality has lifted, scientist may remember him as the first observer of the gorilla in modern times. In the eighteen fifties people were terrified but fascinated by what he told of the great apes. Unfortunately, some of the fabulous native stories of the gorillas were mis-construed as his own, among them tales of the beasts abduoting native women. This distrust has even lingered in the minds of present-day writers. It is interesting that, as a Harvard zoologist, who has specialized...
...Land of the Midnight Sun" and the journey to "Russia in 1903 where he died should not be under-emphasized. Vaucaire is careful to show what contemporary prestige his subject gained from his writings, his lectures and especially his winning personal qualities. The act of reading "Paul Du Chaillu: Gorilla Hunter" will not be too great a tribute to one who was once internationally admired and beloved, and not without cause...
...Akeley came back, he exploded the gorilla myth. The gorilla in his native haunts is not a monster of ferocity. He is rather a mild-mannered vegetarian wandering around in the highest reaches of the equatorial mountains of Africa. His terrible war cry, so horrendously described by du Chaillu and other passionate French writers was nothing but a rather pitiable semi-human wail. He cannot be made to fight unless cornered. Mr. Akeley, on one of his expeditions took two women and a child up into the gorilla country without danger. And big game hunters have been invading this country...
...Chaillu's lecture was well attended, and as interesting as his always are. His original theory of the settlement of England by the Vikings attracted much notice, well-known as it is to many...