196 TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS 
tives would capture a good specimen that, after, 
attending to the business at the animal house, I 
gathered my kit and started northward. At Treng- 
ganu I found Ali and some of the headmen wait- 
ing for me. Just as I had expected, they had 
nothing to report. One of them said that he 
thought I could find a rhinoceros near Rawang. 
“Why do you think so?” 
“Tian,” he replied, “there are traces.” 
“But why haven’t your men been digging pits 
and capturing it?” 
He made some reply to the effect that his men 
were busy planting rice, and I let the matter drop, 
for I saw that he was unwilling to talk. After 
the headman had left the house, I questioned Ali. 
While waiting for me, Ali had drawn the headman 
out on the subject. It seemed that the natives of 
the headman’s kampong were reluctant to go out 
hunting the rhinoceros because they had seen the 
tracks, not only of the beast they were after, but 
also of beasts they wanted to avoid—a pair of 
seladangs. 
I could understand, then, why they were not 
anxious to go out rhinoceros hunting, armed with 
nothing but their knives and muzzle-loading guns; 
for the seladang is, to my mind, the most dangerous 
animal on earth. It is the largest and fiercest of all 
wild cattle; its sense of smell and its vision are 
keen, and it charges with terrific speed. Except 
for one baby seladang that died before it reached 
