DOnSTGS IN THE OKANG-UTAN COUNTRY. 369 



Once it tumbled overboard, and I let it get a good ducking be- 

 fore rescuing it. 



A heavy rain came on during the afternoon but we set up our 

 kadjangs and kept quite dry. As soon as it ceased, we took to our 

 paddles and went down swiftly with the current, reaching Simujan 

 at sunset, wet, tired, and hungry, but very happy in the possession 

 of seven orangs taken in two days' hunting. 



At the back of the government house, there was a wide open 

 space, between the two bath rooms, where the roof projected over 

 the hard ground, which made a capital open-air dissecting-room. 



IVIr. Eng Quee placed a table for me and there I skinned 

 orangs and received deputations of natives who came bringing 

 specimens, or wanting gunj)owder. The ground under the house 

 was hard, dry and clean, and my motley crew of assistants retu'ed 

 under the floor with their work. IVIr. Eng Quee quite enjoyed the 

 novelty of orang-skinning, and quickly became an expert hand at 

 the business. Ah Kee, Perara and the three Malays, worked slowly 

 and required constant super\dsion, but they learned rapidly. 



Early the next morning after oiu* retiuTi, came an old China- 

 man to whom I had given gunpowder a week previous, escorting 

 two other Chinamen, who carried on a pole the dead body of a 

 good-sized orang, which he had shot the day before. I received it 

 with open arms, paid for it, measiired it, and was proceeding to re- 

 move the skin, when there arose a loud shout from those around 

 me, and the next moment, three naked Dyaks staggered up, also 

 bearing on a pole another dead mias. This was a fine, large " mias 

 chappin," with the intensely black skin and the remarkable expand- 

 ed cheeks, or cheek callosities, so characteristic of Simia Wuiinbii. 

 This was larger than any of the specimens I had taken thus far. The 

 Dyaks said they were out the night before trying to noose a deer, 

 and found this mias swinging himself from one tree to another, 

 when a branch suddenly broke and let him fall to the ground. 

 They attacked him at once with their spears and killed him. There 

 were fifteen spear wounds in his chest, but I sewed them up care- 

 fully and entered the old fellow as No. 8. The men facetiously re- 

 marked that we had about enough mias to last through the remain- 

 der of that day. 



About noon there arose another and louder shout from the men 



under the house, which increased to a perfect yell as a party of 



Malays came arovmd the comer with another mias, the largest of 



all, alive, swinging underneath a pole which had been passed be- 



24 



