THE ORANG-OUTANG. 125 



snake. He was a very large specimen, with a head twice 

 as long as it was broad, his eyes set close together above 

 his long snout, of which only the under jaw was movable. 

 His front feet had five toes armed with claws, and his 

 liind feet but four, and webbed to allow him to swim 

 easily. His whole body was shingled with plates of a 

 shell-like membrane that made him a fine coat of mail 

 nearly bullet-proof. Green on the back, his color gradu- 

 ally shaded off into yellow, and he was a terrible foe to 

 meet in the water, where we should not have come oft" so 

 well had not our good luck stood by us just as it did. 



I was duly thankful to regain the bank, which I had 

 never expected to touch again, and had not tlie heart to 

 blame the Dyak who was responsible for our narrow 

 escape ; but I resolved to place less reliance on the natives 

 in future. 



On the way back, Thursday had the satisfaction of 

 shooting a fine full-grown orang-outang, without injuring 

 a bone, and I prepared the skeleton for mounting in an 

 ingeniously easy way suggested by him. Cutting off the 

 meat roughly from the frame, we placed the carcass near 

 a large ant-hill, and surrounded both with a plank fence. 

 In a week the ants had left it for me clean and white as 

 ivory. This satisfied me, as far as orang-outangs went, 

 and I turned next to a lower species of monkey, — the 

 long-armed ape, or gibbon. 



