. Explorations and adventures in the wilds of Africa; . hich they are very careful, and whose wants they supply with almosthuman tenderness and devotion. When taken young they are suscep-tible of taming and domesticating, like the chimpanzee, but as they growolder they become cross and violent, and, curiously enough, the fore«head—prominent in the adult—becomes retreating in later years. Formidable Foe. After waiting some days without seeing any orangs, my native guideidvised our going away from the river, deeper into the unbroken forest^and this we did, a two days march. One morning, just as
. Explorations and adventures in the wilds of Africa; . hich they are very careful, and whose wants they supply with almosthuman tenderness and devotion. When taken young they are suscep-tible of taming and domesticating, like the chimpanzee, but as they growolder they become cross and violent, and, curiously enough, the fore«head—prominent in the adult—becomes retreating in later years. Formidable Foe. After waiting some days without seeing any orangs, my native guideidvised our going away from the river, deeper into the unbroken forest^and this we did, a two days march. One morning, just as I had killedand was examining a queer wild pig, I heard a rustling in the leaves ove?my head, and looking up, was paralyzed with surprise to see, sometwenty-five or thirty feet above me, an enormous orang-outang quietlyseated on a tamarind branch, watching me and grinding his teeth. Myporter was making me elaborate signals of distress which Thursdaytranslated into advice to shoot the beast, who was old and fully grownwith my explosive-ball 207 208 WONDERS OF THE TROPICS. He s?<ys he is an evil one, added Thursday, and that the old orangsare very dangerous and will attack a man at sight. All right I replied. <c If he offers to attack us, I will stop him(promptly with a bullet. It is true that one of my most ardent desires was to obtain a skeletonof a fully-de (/eloped orang-outang, but I decided to postpone the gratifi-cation of it until I should have watched the animals movements in astate of absolute freedom. I told my men to clap their hands and shout^to scare him, but all he did was to sit and grind his teeth; and I wasalmost persuaded to try my Dyaks advice, when the orang-outangcoolly grasped a branch hanging near, and swung himself slowly fromtree to tree without any apparent effort, about as fast as we could walkbeneath. We followed him until the dense undergrowth made the pathimpracticable. An athlete would have performed this trapeze act with,perhaps
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