man could run. The animal had been hiding on a branch and
when we passed had tried to steal away undiscovered.

We found the dead monkey, a young male, in the creek bed and sat down to
examine it. It was evidently a gibbon (_Hylobates_), for its long arms,
round head, and tailless body were unmistakable, but in every species with
which I was familiar the male was black. This one was yellow and we knew it
to be a prize. That there were two other species in the herd was certain
for we had seen both brown and gray monkeys as they dashed away among the
trees, but the gibbons were far more interesting than the others.

Gibbons are probably the most primitive in skull and teeth of all the
anthropoid, or manlike, apes,--the group which also includes the gorilla,
chimpanzee, and orangutan. They are apparently an earlier offshoot of the
anthropoid stem, as held by most authorities, and the giant apes and man
are probably a later branch. Gibbons are essentially Oriental being found
in India, Burma, Siam, Tonking, Borneo, and the Islands of Hainan, Sulu,
Sumatra, and Java.

For the remainder of our stay at the Nam-ting River camp we devoted
ourselves to hunting monkeys and soon discovered that the three species we
had first seen were totally different. One was the yellow gibbon, another a
brown baboon (_Macacus_), and the third a huge gray ape with a long tail
(_Pygathrix_) known as the "langur." On the first day all three species
were together feeding upon some large green beans and this happened once
again, but usually they were in separate herds.

The gibbons soon became extremely wild. Although the same troop could
usually be found in the valley where we had first discovered them, they
chose hillsides where it was almost impossible to stalk them because of the
thorny jungle. Usually when they called, it was from the upper branches of
a dead tree where they could not only scan every inch of the ground below,
but were almost beyond the range of a shotgun. Sometimes we climbed upward
almost on our hands and knees, grasping vines and creepers, drawing
ourselves up by tree trunks, crawling under thorny shrubs and bushes,
slipping, falling, scrambling through the indescribable tangle. We went
forward only when the calls were echoing through the jungle, and stood
motionless as the wailing ceased. But in spite of all our care they would
see or hear us. Then in sudden silence there would be a tremor of the
branches, splash after spla