Description

Paul Belloni du Chaillu (1835-1903) was a French- American traveller and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas and the Pygmy people of central Africa. In his youth he accompanied his father to the west coast of Africa. In Gabon, he was educated by missionaries, and acquired a knowledge of the country, its natural history, its natives, and their languages. Until 1859 he explored the regions of west Africa in the neighbourhood of the equator. Narratives of his expeditions were published, in 1861 and 1867 respectively, under the titles Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa and A Journey to Ashango-Land. He published in 1881 The Land of the Midnight. His 1889 work The Viking Age (2 volumes) was a very broad study of the early history, manners, and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nations. In 1899 he also published The Land of the Long Night.