Du Chailly, PAUL BELLONI, a distinguished traveller, was born in Louisiana in July 1837, and went to school in Paris for a while. Ere he was twenty years old he was already noted as an African traveller, a series of letters on the Gaboon country which he contributed to the New York Tribune—a foretaste of the final fruits of his first great journey—having long ere his return from it excited much interest. In 1855 he sailed from
New York to West Africa, where he spent four years in exploring the region two degrees on each side of the equator, making many interesting discoveries, and travelling about 8000 miles, always on foot, and unaccompanied by white men. He returned to New York in 1859, where he afterwards resided, and lectured frequently. The results of his African travels he published in his work, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861; revised ed. 1871), containing very important contributions to geographical, ethnological, and zoological science. Thus he gave valuable information about the then unknown Ogoway (q.v.) River, and about the cannibal tribe of the Fans. His contributions to zoology related mainly to the gorilla and other remarkable apes. He shot more than 2000 birds, 60 of which were previously unknown, and killed over 1000 quadrupeds. Many of his specimens were purchased by the British Museum. The volume was, however, received with much distrust; and some critics asserted their belief that Du Chaillu's stories about the gorilla were entirely fabulous, and that he had never seen the animal alive, but had purchased his specimens. Du Chaillu's credit was, however, maintained by some men of the highest eminence, and particularly by Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Owen. The substantial accuracy of his statements was soon confirmed by a French expedition which explored the Ogoway River in 1862. In 1863-65 Du Chaillu revisited some of the scenes of his former explorations, vindicated the truthfulness of his former discoveries, and gave an account of his second expedition in A Journey to Ashango-Land (1867). He has published a series of books for the young, founded on his varied adventures, amongst which are Stories of the Gorilla Country (1868), Wild Life under the Equator (1869), Lost in the Jungle (1869), My Ape Kingdome (1870), and The Country of the Dwarfs (1871). His Land of the Midnight Sun (1881) is a record of a stay during 1872-78 in Norway and Sweden. The Viking Age appeared in 1889.