WILD LIFE ACROSS THE WORLD 



and did some six miles a day. At last we decided to 

 stop for lunch, but the halt was not a long one. The 

 land leeches made us only too anxious to get on out of 

 that stretch of country. There are no greater pests in 

 the Far Eastern tropics than these curious leeches. 

 Water is not necessary for their existence. Very 

 similar in appearance to looper caterpillars, they crawl 

 on to the leaves, to drop on you as you go past, and 

 though small enough at the outset, they are able to 

 relieve you of a considerable amount of blood. You 

 rid yourself of their unwelcome presence by the touch 

 of a lighted cigarette, and not by pulling them off, 

 as such a procedure, although quite natural, is likely 

 to result in a troublesome open sore. That day, long 

 before the end of the afternoon trek, every man in 

 our little party had blood running down his limbs 

 as a consequence of leech-bites. 



From a photographer's point of view the trek was 

 a failure. The going was very heavy all the way, a 

 great deal of clearing work was necessary, and so 

 dense was the growth overhead that very little light 

 penetrated. Most of the time we could hear monkeys 

 and birds, and yet, practically speaking, we saw none 

 of them. 



It was about four o'clock when we camped down 

 for the night in thick jungle, great trees towering 

 above us. Close by was a small stream some fifty 

 feet in width, with a drop of about twenty feet from 



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