Paul Belloni Du Chaillu

Paul Belloni Du Chaillu FRGS
Born	1831
Died	1903
Residence	(care of) 129 Mount Street, W.
Occupation	academic
Society Membership membership ESL paper only? ASL Foreign Local Secretary West Coast of Africa 1863.08.05 left 1867.07.15 last listed elected_ASL 1863 societies Royal Geographical Society

Notes

House Notes

friend of Edward Clodd
discussed gorillas with Burton

Notes From Elsewhere

Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (July 31, 1831 (disputed) – April 29, 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. He later researched the prehistory of Scandinavia.

An American explorer of West Africa, of French origin, who created a fierce controversy in 1861 after describing the previously-unknown Gorilla with some dramatic embroidery in his book Explorations & adventures in equatorial Africa; with accounts of the manners and customs of the people, and of the chace of the gorilla (New York, Harper brothers, 1861). At a meeting of the Ethnological Society in June 1861, Du Chaillu retaliated against one of his most vocal critics, T. A. Malone, from the London Institution, by spitting on him, but soon apologized in a contrite letter to The Times. At this time he met Burton, who came to his defence in public, and subsequently corresponded with him—“Du Chaillu showed no end of gratitude, came up from Scotland … and accompanied me to the R.R. and en partant thrust into my hand something from which he told me to drink to his health—when opened it showed up a neat silver mug!”[94] Burton often mentions him in his correspondence, expressing far more skepticism about Du Chaillu’s claims in private than he did in public—“Apropos of the latter Du Chaillu writes to propose a trading & hunting partnership with me—which I shall decline. I have now seen the very narrow field of his exploits

Publications

External Publications

Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Chace of the Gorilla, Crocodile, and other Animals; and A Journey to Ashango-land, and further penetration into Equatorial Africa. While in Ashango Land in 1865, he was elected King of the Apingi tribe. A later narrative, The Country of the Dwarfs was published in 1872.
1881 The Land of the Midnight Sun
1889 work The Viking Age
1900, he also published The Land of the Long Night

House Publications

Observations on the people of western equatorial Africa TES

Related Material Details

Other Material

(A fine cased group shot by Du Chaillu may be seen in the Ipswich Museum in Suffolk, England.)