Strange Yet Gentle Creatures
His writings say that he didn’t seek out natives after finding himself on unknown land as he “had always heard they were savages – headhunters and cannibals.” His memoirs claim that he took up with a group of apes because they provided him with food. His journals stated: “For some strange reason, I was not afraid of these strange creatures. They were hideous to look upon but seemed gentle and harmless.”
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He wrote about how they gave him nuts, grubs, and roots. He was, not surprisingly, starving, so he ate the castoffs, which his system rejected at first. “I was terribly ill afterward and the apes appeared to understand this. One ancient female hunched her way over to me and cradled me in her arms.”