362 TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



in a loose, baggy fold. The face was bare except for a thin growth 

 of hair on the jaws and chin, which, in pictures of the orang utan 

 is usually magnified to a luxuriant beard. His skin was of a shiny 

 brownish-black color, darkest on the face and throat. 



We transferred the body of oiu* dead mias to the other boat and 

 proceeded up the river as before. Nests were now quite numerous 

 in the trees along the banks, but we saw none even fifty yards back 

 from the shore. The Dyaks and Malays both assert that the orangs 

 are subject to fever, and resort to the open margins of rivers and 

 lakes for the benefit of the cooling breezes which blow there. 



The nest of the orang-utan is simply a lot of small green boughs 

 and twigs broken off by the animal, and piled loosely in the fork of 

 a tree, or the top of a saphng. The pile is usually about three feet 

 in diameter, and on this the orang-utan lies on his back, and sleeps. 



A few miles from the scene of our first capture we came to a 

 very fresh green nest, and Eng Quee remarked : 



" Now there must be a mias very near that." 



The next moment we saw the movement of a heavy body in a 

 tree just beyond, and he added : 



" There he is, sir ! There's the mias ! " 



We paddled quickly up and directly saw the mias climbing rap- 

 idly away. I fired immediatel}', and the next moment the boat was 

 driven with fiill force into the screw pines. We tugged frantically 

 at the stems to force a passage, but were soon brought to a stand- 

 still. Holding my rifle above my head, I shd into the water, and 

 this time found it only up to my shoulders. The Malays followed 

 me closely in our wading-match, and in a few minutes we found 

 the mias in a tree-top, disabled, as I had expected. This time my 

 bullet went through his head, whereupon he settled back quietly 

 across two large branches which grew close together, and remained 

 there, dead, with forty feet of bare tree-trunk between him and us. 

 I offered half a dollar to any one who would climb up and throw 

 the mias down, which offer was accepted by one of the Malays. 

 After a hard struggle up the smooth tnink, he reached the animal 

 and sent it tumbling into the water below. Two mias in one day 

 was far better luck than we had dared hope for. 



The river narrowed rapidly as we ^^roceeded, and at length there 

 remained only a passage between the screw pines, which formed a 

 bari-ier thirty yards wide on either side between us and the shore. 

 In two places we found the channel choked with a wide drift of 

 dead pine stems, completely bridging the river, and barring our 



