“In 1859, Paul Du Chaillu, a young explorer of French origin and adopted American nationality, wandered out of the jungle after a four-year expedition in Gabon. He brought with him complete specimens of 20 gorillas, an animal almost unknown outside West Africa. The gorilla’s resemblance to humans astonished many people, especially after Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” later that year. The politician Edwin M. Stanton was soon calling Abraham Lincoln “the original gorilla” and joking that Du Chaillu was a fool to have gone to Africa for what he could as easily have found in Springfield, Ill.”
