SHIPPING WILD ANIMALS 113 
in the treasury, I asked why he did not pay his 
debts. 
He thought for a time and then replied: “Well, 
T’ll tell you. If I pay those people, they will forget 
about the Sultan of Trengganu. If I don’t pay them, 
they’ll never forget me.” 
The conversation turned to the subject of pris- 
oners. On my way to the palace I had passed the 
cages where the prisoners were kept. Many of 
them were starving to death, for, unless their 
friends or family cared for them, they got no food. 
“Why don’t you feed them?” I asked. 
“Why should I?” he replied. “If I feed them, 
my whole country will want to go to jail.” 
Finally, after he had satisfied his craving for 
sociability, he gave me my official permit to go into 
the interior and to force labor. I started out for 
the upper end of his state, bordering on Lower 
Siam. At the mouth of the River Sti, I found 
my agent; we gathered a crew of ten men and went 
up the river as far as we could. When the weeds 
became so thick that we could not force the boats 
through, we took to the jungle and began cutting 
our way to the mud-puddle where the rhinoceroses 
came to wallow. 
We took great precautions in approaching the 
puddle, for once a rhinoceros gets the scent of a 
hunter, he is off through the jungle as fast as he 
can go. The hunter, who spots his animal and 
shoots, has an easy time of it; but the collector, who 
