-100 
Bill has given our smell siaaang to Tom Davis, but it was 
quickly replaced by a lovely brown-furred, almost honey-colored 
gibbon, with a dark-brown face, almost black, surrounded by a 
halo of white fur. This is the first specimen we have had of 
this gibbon, although it is rather widely distributed throughout 
Sumatra. 
July 10- 
Bill had a good night and fells better. He had one shock 
when a message from the hotel was sent over, saying that Harold 
Coolidge ghsd been taken to the hospital in Medan, and that Mrs 
C. wanted us to phone her immediately. Bill dhashed over to 
te&ephone, but the news was not so bad about Harold: It wa^ 
simply a question of the altitude of Brastagi being bad for his 
heart, so he is trying the hospital in Medan instead. What he 
wanted was to know if we would take home the gibbons which his 
associate, Carpenter, had collected in Slam. 
We bought another python today, - not a remarkable one, 
except for the way it was delivered. It came in an open, round 
shallow basket, on the back of a bicycle. Its body was neatly 
coiled round and rund inside, and its head, tied with a piece of 
string to the edge of the basket, looked out over the edge. It 
seemed perfectly calm and contented with this method of trensporta 
tion. One came in the other day tied with a dozen strands of 
rattan to a bamboo pole. Jennier started to untie it, to be sure 
it was a good specimen before he bought it, and of course assumed 
that the courageous captor of the reptile would give him a hand. 
Instead, the moment the snake was free, evervone ran a mile away 
leaving Jennier with a ten-foot python, holding the hech in his ' 
hand so he would not be bitten, but trying to keep the python 
from coiling around him. As he said, "We just rolled around the 
grass together until I got it into a bag. Sk*K it had such bad 
sores on it that I didn't buy it after ell." 
July 11 - Sunday 
A message came early this morning that a big tiger had been 
caught in a trap near Dolok Merangir, and would we come and get it. 
The last time Jennier and Davis went after a tiger it was one that 
had been caught in a steel trap, and its leg was broken. So Bill 
went dashing over to the Hotel to telephone. Unfortunately this 
one ?/as also in a steel trap, so we turned it down. Someone will buy 
it for the skin. Later another message came, this time direct from 
Dolok Merangir, that there was a tiger - did we want it? We still 
did not. In the late afternoon, while the Ingles of Dolok Merangir 
were here, came a third message. This time it was a small tiger 
caught in a grogol. Upon investigation, a grogol seemed to be a 
box trap, end as we were sure that the big tiger had already been 
shot, we thought it better to send Jennier and Davis to look at this 
one. Armed with a. small cage, a gunny sack, and a couple of flash- 
lights, they started out shortly before dusk. At eight-thirty they 
were back, having driven fifty kms, and walked about five, only to 
find that they were chasing the same old tiger. Rumors spread 
as fast in this country as anywhere else, only this was an unusual 
way to vary the tale, with the tiger growing smeller instead of 
bigger ev ery time the tale was told. 
