200 PONGO 
These are a great attraction to the Mias, which comes to feed on the 
unripe fruits, but always retires to the swamp at night. Where the 
country becomes slightly elevated, and the soil dry, the Mias is no 
longer to be found. For example in all the lower part of the Sadong 
Valley it abounds, but as we ascend above the limits of the tides, where 
the country though still flat, is high enough to be dry, it disappears. 
Now the Sarawak Valley has this peculiarity—the lower portion — 
though swampy, is not covered with continuous lofty forest, but is 
principally covered by the Nipa palm; and near the town of Sarawak, 
where the country becomes dry, it is greatly undulated in many parts, 
and covered with small patches of virgin forest and much second 
growth jungle on ground which has once been cultivated by the 
Malays or Dyaks. Now it seems to me probable that a wide extent of 
unbroken and equally lofty virgin forest is necessary to the comfort- 
able existence of these animals. Such forests form their open country, 
where they can roam in every direction with as much facility as the 
Indian on the prairie, or the Arab on the desert; passing from tree- 
top to tree-top, without ever being obliged to descend upon the earth. 
The elevated and drier districts are more frequented by man, more 
cut up by clearings and low second growth jungle not adapted to its 
peculiar mode of progression, and where it would therefore be more 
exposed to danger, and more frequently obliged to descend upon the 
earth. There is probably a greater variety.of fruit in the Mias district, 
the small mountains which rise like islands out of it serving as sort 
of gardens or plantations, where the trees of the uplands are to be 
found in the very midst of the swampy plains. 
“Tt is a singular and very interesting sight to watch a Mias making 
his way leisurely through the forest. He walks deliberately along 
some of the larger branches in the semi-erect attitude which the great 
length of his arms and the shortness of his legs cause him naturally to 
assume, and the disproportion between these limbs is increased by his 
walking on his knuckles, not on the palm of the hand as we should 
do. He seems always to choose those branches which intermingle with 
an adjoining tree, on approaching which he stretches out his long arms, 
and seizing the opposing boughs, grasps them together with both 
hands, seems to try their strength, and then deliberately swings himself 
across to the next branch, on which he walks along as before. He 
never jumps nor springs or even appears to hurry himself, and yet 
manages to get along almost as quickly as a person can run through 
