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Jambai's village the three organise the defences and successfully defeat the attackers. It is a relatively bloodless affair since Jack has ensured that the first volley from Jambai's riflemen consists of wadded paper, intended to scare off the attackers without killing them. In addition, Peterkin dresses up in a colourful outfit and stands on top of a hill, screaming and setting off fireworks. However, when Ralph attacks the trader's camp, he manages to scare off the now-liberated slaves, and another weeks-long pursuit ends with the happy reunion of
Makarooroo and his fiancée, who head down to the (Christianized) coast to get married. After the three take receipt of their stuffed trophies, intended for British museums and schools, they head home, with Ralph and Peterkin saying farewell:
136:
and should be made to undergo physically challenging training. Trading habits in this part of Africa are discussed: trade between the jungle and the coast is done via all the intermediary tribes, a cumbersome and expensive way of doing business. The trader who explains this to Ralph is a friend of missionary efforts: when the natives are ruled by their "abominable superstitions", they become "incarnate fiends, and commit deeds of cruelty that make one's blood run cold to think of". In addition, the trader argues that missionary work and trade should join to improve the fate of Africa: "No good will ever be done in this land, to any great extent, until traders and missionaries go hand in hand into the interior, and the system of trade is entirely remodelled".
28:
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she is to die. The hunters help spring her from her jail, and in the melee that accompanies their escape two natives are killed: Jack trips one who falls to an accidental death in a pit, and
Makarooroo kills another. They hide the woman a few days later with Mbango, the king of another tribe. Peterkin shoots an elephant, but a further hunting adventure goes badly for Jack, who went giraffe hunting by himself but is seriously injured by a rhinoceros. To recuperate the hunters spend a few weeks in the village of another tribe, ruled by a relative of King Jambai.
132:, Jack Martin, Ralph Rover, and Peterkin Gay go their separate ways. Six years later, Ralph (again the narrator), living on his father's inheritance on England's west coast and occupying himself as a naturalist, is visited by Peterkin, whose "weather-beaten though ruddy countenance" he does not recognise. Peterkin, who has stayed in touch with Jack, has hunted and killed every animal on Earth except for the gorilla and now comes to Ralph to entice him on a new adventure. After Peterkin writes him a letter, Jack joins the two, and they leave for Africa.
804:
264:, and had apparently resolved whenever possible to write only about things of which he had personal experience. Still, his gorillas are portrayed as dangerous man-eaters, snapping "great branches" in two while pursued by hunters; as a gorilla nutritionist said "that fictional gorilla likely would have been peacefully nibbling on the branches' leaves". Ballantyne's gorilla, on the contrary, is a "man monkey ... a very unnatural monster".
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298:(1878), "both of which were popular but served only to entrench a basically unsympathetic view of blacks and a correspondingly inflated appreciation of white activity at the Cape". In all his novels, the paternalistic relationship between the Christian missionary and the receptive native is a red thread.
139:
In the village of King Jambai, the hunters are well received (boiled elephant foot is served and judged delicious), but problems arise when a young woman, betrothed to
Makarooroo, their English-speaking guide, is judged by the village's "fetishman" to be responsible for an illness of the king's, and
240:
They are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man as does the
Chimpanzee ... The hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended; if his aim is not sure he permits the animal to grasp the barrel, and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit)
135:
The three pick up a native guide and attend an elephant hunt. All kinds of animals are shot, killed, eaten, and stuffed, and the action is interspersed with sometimes serious, sometimes jocular conversation. Ralph theorises at length on "muffs", which he defines as boys who are too gentle and mild
194:
reflects the then prevalent view of evolutionary theory; the
Victorian age based its imperialist ideology in part on the idea that evolution had resulted in "white, English superiority that was anchored in the notion of a civilized nation elected by God to rule inferior peoples." Besides Darwin
143:
The plot for the second half of the book involves a slave trader, whom the three hunters and their guide pursue for weeks to prevent the trader and his gang from taking over and enslaving Mbango's people. They are too late, and
Makarooroo's fiancée is among the captured. When the trader attacks
211:
The gorilla, knowledge of which was first spread in Europe in 1847, was responsible for further speculation in
England about the evolutionary status of humans. In fact, many exploratory accounts by Westerners, as was argued by Jennifer Dickenson, "are permeated with 'gothic tropes—boundary
220:, an anthropologist who had observed and studied gorillas in West Africa, prompted great public interest in the relation between gorillas and humans. Ballantyne was so "stimulated" by Du Chaillu's work (his direct inspiration) that he published two novels in 1861 dealing with gorillas,
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among
Ballantyne's contemporaries is partly explained by what the resemblance between the great apes and men had to say about evolution. Ballantyne had long been interested in various theories of evolution, an interest evident in
212:
transgressions, dark doubles, haunting pasts, and threats of regression—in order to play upon
Victorian anxieties about the origins of man' in the aftermath of the publication of Darwin's
120:, an animal until recently unknown to the Western world, which came to play an important role in contemporary debates on evolution and the relation between white Westerners and Africans.
280:, Ballantyne continued to be interested in Africa, sharing a Victorian preoccupation with slavery in Africa and activism against the slave trade; this was the theme of his 1873 novel
241:
he fires; should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of an ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter.
148:"Farewell," said I, as we leaned over the vessel's side and gazed sadly at the receding shore --- "farewell to you, kind missionaries and faithful negro friends."
257:: "this complex relation perhaps most forcefully articulates post-Darwinian anxieties about the fixity of species and the meaning and status of humanity".
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and set in "darkest Africa", its main characters are the earlier novel's three boys: Ralph, Peterkin and Jack. The book's themes are similar to those of
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228:. The idea of an imaginary double consisting of gorilla and hunter most likely resulted from the work of American missionary and naturalist
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Giles-Vernick, Tamara; Rupp, Stephanie (2006), "Visions of Apes, Reflections on Change: Telling Tales of Great Apes in
Equatorial Africa",
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It was this image of the gorilla that became "a staple of adventure fiction", including Du Chaillu's works and Ballantyne's
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Dybasq, Cheryl Lyn; Raskins, Ilya (2007), "Out of Africa: A Tale of Gorillas, Heart Disease ... and a Swamp Plant",
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Honaker, Lisa (2004), ""One Man to Rely On": Long John Silver and the Shifting Character of Victorian Boys' Fiction",
249:. As John Miller argues, the figures of the hunter and the gorilla occur in a kind of doubling prevalent in Victorian
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Miller, John (2008), "Adventures in the Volcano's Throat: Tropical Landscape and Bodily Horror in R. M. Ballantyne's
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153:"Ay," added Peterkin, with a deep sigh, "and fare-you-well, ye monstrous apes; gorillas, fare-you-well!"
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Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America
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form a scientific and social background for that novel. Ideas published in Darwin's
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Wyk, M. van (1979), "The Origins of Some Victorian Images of Africa",
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Ballantyne already made some errors in his descriptions of nature in
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were in broad circulation before the book's 1859 publication, and
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The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration
216:" (quoted in Giles-Vernick and Rupp). The arrival in England of
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442:"'The Broken Telescope': Misrepresentation in The Coral Island"
199:, and in later publications also acknowledged the naturalist
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himself, Ballantyne had been reading books by Darwin's rival
290:(1869). He visited South Africa and wrote two Cape novels,
100:(1861) is a boys' adventure novel by Scottish author
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97:The Gorilla Hunters: A Tale of the Wilds of Africa
535:Conniff, Richard (2009). "Discoveringgorilla".
393:Anderson, Katharine (2008), "Coral Jewellery",
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89:Print (hardback and paperback)
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810:Children's literature portal
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292:The Settler and the Savage
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538:Evolutionary Anthropology
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296:Six Months at the Cape
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365:10.1353/arw.2006.0067
268:Ballantyne and Africa
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214:The Origin of Species
197:Alfred Russel Wallace
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818:Online text
294:(1877) and
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251:primatology
207:The gorilla
935:Categories
670:BioScience
302:References
158:Background
737:162220139
567:221732306
559:1060-1538
523:162508944
425:201782824
381:145631180
307:Citations
66:Publisher
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729:30225794
625:40550389
613:Symplokē
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373:20065193
169:gorillas
118:gorillas
48:Language
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51:English
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