Du Chaillu was an explorer and traveler of great note. He discovered the gorilla in Central Africa and his work is one of the seminal pieces of early Central African exploration. Du Chaillu's travels to Equatorial Africa were to an area previously unexplored by Europeans--the wooded region bordering the Equator, in the interior of Western Africa. It was on this journey that he was able to observe the habits of several remarkable species of animals found nowhere else and heretofore unknown. He wrote extensively, not only on Africa, but on Scandinavia and the Vikings as well as on other regions of the planet.