MONKEYS, BEARS, AND ELEPHANTS. 143 



As we hurry up, rifle in hand, my swiftest-footed Mulcer stands 

 there with a long, bare, black arm, pointing upward into the top of 

 a hundred-and-twenty-foot blackwood tree, and we begin to peer 

 and dodge about to catch a ghmpse of the largest monkey in the 

 troop. All the men gather round the tree and peer and point, and 

 try to show me just where he is. At last we see his head, and a 

 pair of black eyes staring stealthily down at us. The rifle is up in 

 a second, and we are about to pull the trigger when adios ! — the 

 monkeys are up and off again, and the chase begins anew. 



The very same performance is repeated again, and perhaps two 

 or three times more, the monkey running away just as I catch 

 sight of him and raise my rifle. But at last he waits a little too 

 long, the rifle cracks, the monkey starts up violently, clutches des- 

 perately at the branches around him, loses his balance, and with 

 outstretched legs and arms, the big, black body comes flying down 

 through space without touching a single limb to break his fall, and 

 strikes with a terrific thud upon the earth. We naturally think 

 such a fearful fall has broken every large bone in his body, but we 

 find only a humerus, or perhaps a femur snapped in two. If he is 

 not dead, or likely to die quickly, I take from my shot-bag a knife 

 with a very slender blade, thrust its sharp point into his occiput, 

 give it a slight turn and presto ! he is dead. Then the Mulcers 

 peel a long strip of bark from a tree near by and tie together the 

 legs of Semnopithecua cucuHatus, sling him under tho pole with the 

 deer or other small game and we start on. 



It would seem that this black langur utters his diabolical cry at 

 any animal of which he is particularly afraid, and it is well known 

 that a troop of them will sometimes follow a tiger for some dis- 

 tance, hooting and swearing at him just as they did at us. The 

 whereabouts of a tiger has often been discovered in this way, for 

 instead of running from him they follow him up. After the explo- 

 sive "wah! wah ! " the remainder of the cry is continuous, every 

 alternate syllable being px-oduced by drawing in the breath, so that 

 the sound is very much like that made by sawing an empty barrel 

 in two. Many times the startling cry above our heads, and so very 

 near, has caused us all to jump and involuntarily grasp our weap- 

 ons, causing much amusement afterwards. At such times it always 

 seemed to me that the monkeys were swearing at us, and the fiend- 

 ish expression of their faces strengthened the belief. 



From first to last I shot about forty-five laugurs, out of which I 

 got twenty skeletons and eight skins. The tree-tops were so lofty 



