104 HUNTING IN THE JUNGLE. 



tree ; but when the trunk was severed the tree only 

 leaned over, and was held in that position by innumerable 

 tough vines running to a dozen neighboring trees. It 

 would take us all night to cut them all down ; still, we 

 began the work, which almost immediately gave the tree 

 such a shaking that down came the gigantic orang with 

 a tremendous thud. When we came to measure him, we 

 found him a giant indeed, stretching from hand to hand 

 over six feet. He was horribly wounded, — both his legs 

 broken, a bullet in his neck, another in his jaw, and a 

 whole joint shot away from the base of his spinal column. 

 And yet he was alive I When he fell the Chinamen 

 lashed him to a litter and carried him into camp, where 

 it took Charley and myself all day to clean his skin and 

 boil the flesh from his skeleton. From this and many 

 similar experiences I have become convinced that, in 

 spite of stories to the contrary, the orang-outang never 

 attacks man. His policy is always flight, and to my own 

 testimony is added that of all the Chinese wood-cutters 

 whom I met in Borneo ; and the island is full of them. 



The next day, while looking for material to make 

 myself a table for natural history specimens, Thursday 

 and I ran across an old camp of some of these Chinese 

 lumbermen, where fragments of plank and scantling w^ere 

 lolenty. While we were gathering these I chanced to 

 look up in the tree above us, and into the eyes of a very 

 large orang-outang whose head only was visible. Re- 

 membering the skeleton I wanted, I raised my rifle 



