hides in the swampy jungles, and very rarely comes
to the ground. The natives regard them as a sort of sacred object, and
have a great horror of killing them. Indeed, a person who kills a
man-ape, they regard as a murderer; and so when Wallace announced to his
attendants that he wanted to secure several specimens of these "wild men
of the woods," they cried, "Alas! he is making a collection: it will be
our turn next!" And they fled in terror.

Wallace then hired another set of servants and resolved to make no
confidants, but just go ahead and find his game.

He had hunted for weeks through forest and jungle, but never a glimpse
or sight of the man-ape! He had almost given up the search, and
concluded with several English scientists that this orang-utan was a
part of that great fabric of pseudo-science invented by imaginative
sailormen, who took most of their inland little journeys around the
capstan. And so musing, seated in the doorway of his bamboo house, he
looked out upon the forest, and there only a few yards away, swinging
from tree to tree, was a man-ape. It seemed to him to be about five
times as large as a man.

He seized his gun and approached; the beast stopped, glared, and railed
at him in a voice of wrath. It broke off branches and threw sticks at
him.

Wallace thought of the offer made him by the South Kensington Museum:
"One hundred pounds in gold for an adult male, skin and skeleton to be
properly preserved and mounted; seventy-five pounds for a female."

The huge animal showed its teeth, cast one glance of scornful contempt
on the puny explorer, and started on, swinging thirty feet at a stretch
and catching hold of the limbs with its two pairs of hands.

Wallace grasped his gun and followed, lured by the demoniac shape. A
little of the superstition of the natives had gotten into his veins: he
dare not kill the thing unless it came toward him, and he had to shoot
it in self-defense.

It traveled in the trees about as fast as he could on the ground.
Occasionally it would stop and chatter at him, throwing sticks in a most
human way, as if to order him back.

Finally, the instincts of the naturalist got the better of the man, and
he shot the animal. It came tumbling to the ground with a terrific
crash, grasping at the vines and leaves as it fell.

It was quite dead, but Wallace approached it with great caution. It
proved to be a female, of moderate size, in height about three and a
half feet, si