66 Borneo — The Orang-Utan, 



this seemed to satisfy them, for they immediately began 

 making a quantity of pegs of the same kind, while I looked 

 on with great interest, wondering how they could possibly 

 ascend such a lofty tree by merely driving pegs in it, the 

 failure of any one of which at a good height would certainly 

 cause their death. When about two dozen pegs were made, 

 one of them began cutting some very long and slender bam- 

 boo from another clump, and also prepared some cord from 

 the bark of a small tree. They now drove in a peg very 

 firmly at about three feet from the ground, and bringing one 

 of the long bamboos, stood it upright close to the tree, and 

 bound it firmly to the two first pegs by means of the bark 

 cord, and small notches near the head of each peg. One of 

 the Dyaks now stood on the first peg and drove in a third 

 about level with his face, to which he tied the bamboo in the 

 same way, and then mounted another step, standing on one 

 foot and holding by the bamboo at the peg immediately 

 above him, while he drove in the next one. In this manner 

 he ascended about twenty feet, when the upright bamboo 

 becoming thin, another was handed up by his companion, and 

 this was joined on by tying both bamboos to three or four 

 of the pegs. "When this was also nearly ended, a third was 

 added, and shortly after the lowest branches of the tree were 

 reached, along which the young Dyak scrambled, and soon 

 sent the mias tumbling headlong down. I was exceedingly 

 struck by the ingenuity of this mode of climbing, and the 

 admirable manner in which the peculiar properties of the 

 bamboo were made available. The ladder itself was per- 

 fectly safe, since if any one peg were loose or faulty, and 

 gave way, the strain would be thrown on several others 

 above and below it. 1 now understood the use of the line 

 of bamboo pegs sticking in trees, which I had often seen, 

 and wondered for what pui-pose they could have been put 

 there. This animal was almost identical in size and appear- 

 ance with the one I had obtained at Semabang, and was the 

 only other male specimen of the Simla morio which I obtain- 

 ed. It is now in the Derby Museum. 



I afterward shot two adult females and two young ones of 

 different ages, all of which I preserved. One of the females, 

 with several young ones, was feeding on a durion-tree with 



