chap, iv.] MIAS AND CROCODILE. 95 



Mias, and the only creature he ever rights with is the 

 crocodile. When there is no fruit in the jungle, he goes 

 to seek food on the banks of the river, where there are 

 plenty of young shoots that he likes, and fruits that 

 grow close to the water. Then the crocodile sometimes 

 tries to seize him, hut the Mias gets upon him, and 

 heats him with his hands and feet, and tears him and 

 kills him." He added that he had once seen such a 

 fight, and that he believes that the Mias is always the 

 victor. 



My next informant was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the 

 Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjon Eiver. He said : " The 

 Mias has no enemies ; no animals dare attack it but the 

 crocodile and the python. He always kills the crocodile 

 by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jaws, 

 and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a Mias, 

 he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon 

 kills it. The Mias is very strong ; there is no animal in 

 the jungle so strong as he." 



It is very remarkable that an animal so large, so 

 peculiar, and of such a high type of form as the Orang- 

 utan, should be confined to so limited a district — to two 

 islands, and those almost the last inhabited by the 

 higher Mammalia ; for, eastward of Borneo and Java, 

 the Quadrumania, Buminants, Carnivora, and many other 

 groups of Mammalia, diminish rapidly, and soon entirely 



