CHAPTER XXXIII. 



COLLECTING AT PADANG LAKE. 



A Hunt on Gnnong Popook. — A Lost Hunter. — A Handsome Dyak. — A Recep- 

 tion by Torchlight. — More Orang-utans. — How an Orang Sleeps. — Probos- 

 cis Monkeys. — Living rersus Stuffed Specimens. — A Remarkable Nose. — 

 Luckless Gibbon-hunting. — Luckless Wild-hog Hunting. — Mud and 

 Thorns. — Picturesque Vegetation. — Fresh-water Turtles and Fishes. — Re- 

 turn to the Sadong. 



I SPENT a most deliglitful fortnight with the Dyaks at the Popook 

 village. The weather was continuously fine, the Dyaks were 

 agreeable and interesting, the jungle yielded a good harvest of 

 specimens, and every day there was something new to see and 

 to do. 



I presently sent Lamudin and his companion back to Simujan, 

 and with my three other men settled down comfortably to Uve and 

 work. 



My first experience was a rather ridiculous one for me, and con- 

 sisted in my getting lost, almost within sight of the village. Dur- 

 ing the afternoon of the day following our aiTival, we heard some 

 wah-wahs (gibbons) crying in the tree-tops, far up the steep side of 

 Gunong Popook, and, hastily catching up my shot-gun, I started 

 for them. 



My boy Perara was also hunting on the mountain, and, before I 

 had quite reached my game, he fired twice, close-by, which scared 

 the wah-wahs into silence and out of the neighborhood. I climbed 

 on until I reached the summit of the mountain, which is a perfect 

 cone only a few yards across at the top. Just as I reached the 

 summit, a female sambur deer ran along the steep slope, forty yards 

 below me, in full view. Having only small shot in my gun, it would 

 have been worse than useless to have fired. 



Presently, I began to slowly descend. As I was quietly stoop- 

 ing down to examine some shells, another sambur, also a doe, trotted 



