Du Chaillu, Paul Belloni

du sha-yu', Paul Belloni (1835-1903), a noted traveler and author. He was born at Paris and died at St. Petersburg. His father was a merchant in the French settlement on the Gabun, West Africa. Young Paul was educated at the Jesuit mission. While quite a young lad he delighted in excursions into the region surrounding his father's trading station. His great enjoyment was the study of natural history. At various times he stuffed 2,000 specimens of birds. In 1853 he came to this country. Later he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The members of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences became so interested in his tales of the jungle and its inhabitants that he was provided with means to explore the unknown region lying on the equator. So Du Chaillu returned to Africa and spent four years traveling alone over 8,000 miles. On his return he published Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. It was a treasure of scientific information. His accounts of gorillas and dwarfs were received with suspicion; but subsequent explorations have confirmed the truth of Du Chaillu's statements. In 1863 he started on a second expedition, the results of which were published in A Journey to Ashangoland. Other books, written especially for young readers, are My Apingi Kingdom, The Country of the Dwarfs, Lost in the Jungle, Wild Life under the Equator, and Stories of the Gorilla Country. In 1881 appeared The Land of the Midnight Sun, the result of several years' travel and observation in northern Scandinavia and Lapland. A later work, The Viking Age, describes Norse antiquities discovered in mounds, cairns, and bogs of Scandinavia. He discloses a state of civilization much more advanced than European writers have hitherto conceded. He maintained that the Teutonic people that conquered England was not of Anglo-Saxon, but of Viking, that is to say, Scandinavian blood, akin to the Normans. See Gorilla; Dwarf