200 PONGO 



These are a great attraction to the Mias, which comes to feed on the 

 unripe fruits, but always retires to the swamp at night. Where the 

 country becomes slightly elevated, and the soil dry, the Mias is no 

 longer to be found. For example in all the lower part of the Sadong 

 Valley it abounds, but as we ascend above the limits of the tides, where 

 the country though still flat, is high enough to be dry. it disappears. 

 Now the Sarawak Valley has this peculiarity — the lower portion 

 though swampy, is not covered with continuous lofty forest, but is 

 principally covered by the Nipa palm ; and near the town of Sarawak, 

 where the country becomes dry, it is greatly undulated in many parts, 

 and covered with small patches of virgin forest and much second 

 growth jungle on ground which has once been cultivated by the 

 Malays or Dyaks. Now it seems to me probable that a wide extent of 

 unbroken and equally lofty virgin forest is necessary to the comfort- 

 able existence of these animals. Such forests form their open country, 

 where they can roam in every direction with as much facility as the 

 Indian on the prairie, or the Arab on the desert ; passing from tree- 

 top to tree-top, without ever being obliged to descend upon the earth. 

 The elevated and drier districts are more frequented by man, more 

 cut up by clearings and low second growth jungle not adapted to its 

 peculiar mode of progression, and where it would therefore be more 

 exposed to danger, and more frequently obliged to descend upon the 

 earth. There is probably a greater variety of fruit in the Mias district, 

 the small mountains which rise like islands out of it serving as sort 

 of gardens or plantations, where the trees of the uplands are to be 

 found in the very midst of the swampy plains. 



"It is a singular and very interesting sight to watch a Mias making 

 his way leisurely through the forest. He walks deliberately along 

 some of the larger branches in the semi-erect attitude which the great 

 length of his arms and the shortness of his legs cause him naturally to 

 assume, and the disproportion between these limbs is increased by his 

 walking on his knuckles, not on the palm of the hand as we should 

 do. He seems always to choose those branches which intermingle with 

 an adjoining tree, on approaching which he stretches out his long arms, 

 and seizing the opposing boughs, grasps them together with both 

 hands, seems to try their strength, and then deliberately swings himself 

 across to the next branch, on which he walks along as before. He 

 never jumps nor springs or even appears to hurry himself, and yet 

 manages to get along almost as quickly as a person can run through 



