Jungle trails and jungle people : travel, adventure and abservation in the Far East . , but which in its home is knownas the wa wa. When this quaint-faced, long-armed creature ceased its plaintive wail, therecame always at dusk a single mournful bird note,repeated continually from deep in the jungle,where you felt you must seek it out to stop itsmadding monotone. Even the hoarse croaking ofthe herons was a relief. Frequently by day thepoot-poot bird, with its chestnut body, wings andtail, and black head and neck, gave voice to joy ofbeing, and now and again I heard the bird of twonotes, a high
Jungle trails and jungle people : travel, adventure and abservation in the Far East . , but which in its home is knownas the wa wa. When this quaint-faced, long-armed creature ceased its plaintive wail, therecame always at dusk a single mournful bird note,repeated continually from deep in the jungle,where you felt you must seek it out to stop itsmadding monotone. Even the hoarse croaking ofthe herons was a relief. Frequently by day thepoot-poot bird, with its chestnut body, wings andtail, and black head and neck, gave voice to joy ofbeing, and now and again I heard the bird of twonotes, a high and a low one, which so often I hadmet while hunting in Siam, and which is commonlycredited with warning the jungle Free People ofmans approach. And thus we went along. One afternoon, as in the gathering dusk I triedto shoot, for examination, one of the great fruit-bats* passing overhead in swiftly moving flocks,we came to the tiny branch river we had been seek- * Pteropus medius; locally called flying fox and common to theEast Indies. The adults hody is about twelve inches AN ELEPHANT 219 ing these two days; and about one hundred yardsfrom its mouth found quite a little fleet of canoestied up in front of several houses and a dozen ormore natives with spears and krises in hand gath-ered on the bank in an obvious state of toward them, it really looked as if we hada fight on our hands; and I must say I did notmuch care, for, if the truth be told, I was exas-perated by the surly reception we had received allalong from the river natives, whom I found themost uncivil of any I ever encountered in any fron-tier section. We slowed, but kept moving towardthe land, and while yet in midstream my Malayssent out a hail to which those on the bank re-sponded; and forthwith followed much and ani-mated conversation between them, which seemedto please my Malays increasingly as it could not understand what information myMalays imparted to the natives, but I seeme
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishe, booksubjecthunting
