TAPIR. 129 



though shy, were not uncommon. But the number of 

 head of game was very small. 



My official duties kept me in court throughout the 

 week from Monday morning until Saturday midday, 

 and it was not easy, therefore, for my tracker Malias 

 to arrange the time and the place together. He was 

 often able to come and tantalise me by a story of an 

 animal within comfortable reach, so far as distance 

 was concerned, but inaccessible until another three 

 days should pass and Saturday come round. And 

 then the usual result would be that we devoted the 

 whole of Sunday to tramping through a forest in 

 which we could find nothing more recent than four- 

 day-old tracks. 



After a long series of disappointments, Malias 

 suggested that we could break the run of luck by 

 shooting a tapir, which, he said, we should have no 

 difficulty in finding. There was a number of tapirs 

 scattered through the district, but we had never 

 thought of going after them. Malias, however, had 

 in his mind a particular animal that frequented a 

 sulphur spring near his house. Jenali was the 

 name of the place, and at one time, before the dis- 

 trict had been opened up by roads and railways, 

 and overrun by prospectors and miners, it had been 

 visited by every kind of big game; but now they 

 had all been driven away, and the only animal 

 that still dared to resort thither was this solitary 

 tapir. It seemed, however, to make amends for 

 desertion of the others by its constancy, for, ac- 

 cording to Malias, seldom a night passed that it 

 did not drink at the spring. 



I 



