IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap, xi 



times, walking up and down the room, and when he could no longer 

 move through sheer weakness, they put him to bed, taking thither 

 the opium-smoking apparatus. To get him away, I believe, from 

 the evil influences of which I was the cause, they carried him to 

 another house. But as he was in a high fever, they soon after took 

 him down to the stream, and kept him immersed in the water for a 

 quarter of an hour. Apparently the use of a bath to keep down 

 fever has been practised in China long before it was known to us. 

 After the bath they made him swallow two bananas, and then 

 obliged him to smoke opium repeatedly. The next morning the 

 poor old man was dead, which was not surprising. And yet they 

 believed that my Mayas had killed him ! 



On the 3rd April the weather was again damp and rainy, and 

 I became anxious about my orang skins. I accordingly had a fire 

 lighted in the smithy to endeavour to keep the air in the hut as dry 

 as possible. After breakfast I was told that a Mayas had been seen 

 in the vicinity, so I sallied forth with my gun and followed my 

 guides. In less than twenty minutes they showed me a big tree, 

 about 150 feet high, on which, sure enough, I saw the animal, still 

 in the same place where it had been first seen. It was partially 

 hidden amidst the branches, and would not move, although we 

 made plenty of noise. From where I stood at the foot of the tree 

 it was a difficult shot, for I had to aim nearly vertically upwards 

 I fired first one and then a second shot, but could not make out 

 whether I had hit him or not ; he then slowly moved, but did not 

 leave the tree. This was growing at the bottom of a deep ravine, 

 so I climbed up one of the slopes, and was then able to see the creature 

 well ; it was looking down, and was evidently badly wounded. I 

 got a good position, and, after a careful aim, fired again. This time 

 the Mayas fell crashing through the branches, which happily some- 

 what broke its fall, or, from the immense height of its perch, it 

 would have reached the ground a bag of broken bones. When I 

 got to it, it was quite dead. My last bullet had gone clean through its 

 heart and had passed out at the nape of the neck, splitting the occi- 

 pital bone. I noticed that as soon as it fell it gave off a peculiar 

 odour of venison. It proved to be a half-grown male, and the girth 

 of the thorax, just below the sternum, was 62 centim. I preserved 

 the skin of this specimen in spirits, and on my return presented it 

 to my former teacher in zoology, Professor Paolo Savi, of the 

 University of Pisa, where it is now mounted in the Zoological 

 Museum. 



152 



