FURTHER DESCRIPnON OF AFRICA. 269 



with their legs round a branch, their heads forward in the most 

 uncomfortable attitude, occasionally uttering mournful sounds. 

 When pursued they climb slowly up a tree, and at night sleep in 

 the huts built to cover their young, of which they are very careful, 

 and whose wants they supply with almost human tenderness and 

 devotion. When taken young they are susceptible of taming and 

 domesticating, like the chimpanzee, but as they grow older they 

 become cross and violent, and, curiously enough, the forehead — 

 prominent in the adult — becomes retreating in later years. 



FORMIDABLE FOE. 



After waiting some days without seeing any orangs, my native 

 guide advised our going away from the river, deeper .into the 

 unbroken forest, and this we did, a two days' march. One morn- 

 ing, just as I had killed and was examining a queer wild pig, I heard 

 a rustling in the leaves over my head, and looking up, was paralyzed 

 with surprise to see, some twenty-five or thirty feet above me, an 

 enormous orang-outang quietly seated on a tamarind branch, watch- 

 ing me and grinding his teeth. My porter was making me elaborate 

 signals of distress which Thursday translated into advice to shoot 

 the beast, who was old and fully grown, with my explosive-ball rifle. 



"He says he is an evil one," added Thursday, "and that the 

 old orangs are very dangerous and will attack a man at sight." 



"All right," I replied. "If he offers to attack us, I will stop 

 him promptly with a bullet." 



It is true that one of my most ardent desires was to obtain a 

 skeleton of a fully-developed orang-outang, but I decided to post- 

 pone the gratification of it until I should have watched the animal's 

 movements in a state of absolute freedom. I told my men to clap 

 their hands and shout, to scare him, but all he did was to sit and 

 grind his teeth ; and I was almost persuaded to try my Dyak's advice, 

 when the orang-outang coolly grasped a branch hanging near, and 

 swung himself slowly from tree to tree without any apparent eft'ort, 

 about as fast as we could walk beneath. We followed him until the 

 dense undergrowth made the path impracticable. An athlete would 

 have performed this trapeze act with, perhaps, more grace, but 



