Evening star., 1921-06-05

furious. squirming in the slime of
the pit, pounding with his feet and
grunting.
T DIVIDED my crew, putting half at
building a cage of heavy timbers
and the others at digging away the
ground in front of the beast. BY the
time the cage was put together and
bound securely with rattan. We had
an incline running down to the pit.
with two feet of earth walling the
rhinoceroS in. Then we placed skids
on the incline and let the cage slide
down. native. who had been sent
back to the nearest kampong. or ma
tive village. to recruit men and water
bunaloes, had soon returned with
score of other natives, driving six
watcr-buffaloes before them. Then
went through the usual business of
holding meeting and explaining
carefully, in the greatest detail, exact
~ what we were about to do and
how we were to do it; what each man
was 20 do and when and how. When
they understood perfectly we set
about digging away the wall that
separated the rhinoceros from the
open end of the cage. With a little
more than one foot of earth remain
ing, we began to prod him. The i'm
mense beast pounded his feet on the
bottom of the pit, grunting and NOV
ing forward as rapidly as he could get
foothold. He put his head against the
wall and rooted: the wall toppled over
and he lurched out of the pit and into
the cage. The natives slipped the
end-bar into place.
The capture was f1nished-but not
the work. A rhinoceros cannot be
broken and driven through the jungle
III he 1,a +. l4l
every foot of the way. With the six
water-buffaloes straining and every
native giving hand, we pulled the
cage up the incline and mounted it on
the runners. 1t took a week of steady
cutting to clear the way, so that we
could drag the cage to the Trengganu
river. There we built a heavy raft
and fioated the cage down to port.
Another two weeks passed before we
could ship the beast to Singapore, for
transshipment to Perth.
received for the animal e2o0.
value. But it was as much as the
Perth Geological Gardens could af-
ford to pay, and 1 was glad to be
able to put SO fine specimen into the
hands Of Mr.. La Seuf.
One day when 1 was busy in my
animal house Ali came to me with
the message that three natives from
Pontianak, Borneo, were outside
They had something important to
tell me. Ali said. When they came
in, found that 1 knew one of them;
he was an animal trader from whom
I had bought some birds and monk
eys. The other two were headmen
from the interior Of Borneo.
The headmen had gone to the trad
er with the story Of two, sxSe
that were terrorizing
their villages. and the trader was
bringing them to me for advice. We
sat down in the shade and discussed
the situation. The orang .outangs
had run off with young girl and
had recently killed one of the men.
The natives had tried repeatedly 70
kill them, but without success, and
now they were afraid to adventre
into the Jungle.
For several years I had had a
standing order from the Antwerp
Geological Gardens for a good speci-
men Of orang-outang. and / had
to sS just nto as as IS ms
what I could find. Orang-outangs
command unlimited prices because
they are SO hard to capture and.
once captured, so difficult to deliver.
On account Of homesickness and
ssnsisiyeness to cilmatis natnita changes; y sney
orang-putang loses his spirit imme-
diately; he sits brooding over his
capture and often refuses all food.
On one occasion I shipped eighteen
small and medium-sized orang-
outangs to San Francisco, hoping to
land two or three alive. but they all
died before reaching port. If had
been able to deliver a good specimen.
in the United States could have sold
Il for 5000.
DUT here were two full-grown
- beasts. already located. and wait
ing for me to try my hand at cap
f.rspp s4heyn WAS greatly inter.