TAPIR. 131 



mile or two through secondary forest, we came to 

 the Pari river. This we crossed by a primitive 

 bridge, consisting of a series of shaky poles resting 

 upon insecure posts. A mile farther on we came 

 to a little opening in the forest, where some en- 

 terprising Chinaman had boldly ventured to find 

 alluvial tin, and had lost his capital. In the middle 

 of a few acres of felled timber, which was fast being 

 covered and smothered by a dense growth of en- 

 tangling vegetation, was the pit, some fifteen yards 

 square, in which his money had been sunk. It was 

 now full of water, to which the clayey soil lent a 

 colour of a weirdly unnatural blue, a dull dead 

 turquoise. Like a glassy eye, it directed an unre- 

 sponsive stare at the brilliant sky above it. Beside 

 this chill pool stood the abandoned coolie-house, a 

 tottering ruin. In the high grass that grew beside 

 it, we found some old tracks of the tapir, which had 

 found something palatable in the alkaline taste of 

 the refuse -soiled earth around the kitchen. From 

 this point we proceeded slowly, for we were not 

 far from the sulphur spring, and it was possible 

 that the tapir, after wallowing and drinking there, 

 might turn its steps in our direction, in which case 

 we might, if unawares, stumble upon it, or might 

 pass its tracks unwittingly, and later suffer one of 

 the most annoying experiences of a tracker, to find 

 the tracks some miles farther on, to follow them 

 patiently, cautiously, warily, and then, after an in- 

 finity of ungrudging toil, to find oneself at a place 

 where, gaily tramping down a path in the gladness 

 of the early morning, with eyes full of what the 



