42 TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS 
next year I spent much of my time inland, in hunt- 
ing and fishing, and I discovered that Sumatra was 
not the field for collecting that I had expected it to 
be. But it served my purposes of learning the 
language and becoming acquainted with the people 
quite as well as any other part of the Archipelago 
would have done; and I was too busy studying jun- 
gle-craft from the Orang Ulu to think of leaving. 
Ali, who was always with me, was an invaluable 
aid. He was a first-rate spear-thrower, but he 
wanted to be a good shot. He took great pride in 
my 50-110 express gun, which he carried behind 
me. He had a trait peculiar in Malays—he was 
always busy. And he spent a great deal of his 
energy in cleaning and polishing the gun, hoping 
for the great reward of being allowed to shoot it. 
Eventually he became a good marksman. The other 
servant who accompanied me on my trips into 
the jungle was a Chinese coolie. He had been my 
rickshaw boy and I promoted him to the position of 
cook and store-keeper. Ali was intensely jealous of 
him but they worked well together. 
Though the natives made a sport of spear-throw- 
ing, they had given over that method of hunting. 
They were armed with guns that I honestly believe 
dated back to Revolutionary times—old, muzzle- 
loading flintlocks. Where they got them I have 
never been able to discover. They were fascinated 
by my 50-110, of course, and, when Ali cleaned it, 
they squatted about him, wide-eyed. Whenever I 
