We snared and trapped many small animals and occasionally built pit-traps for tapirs. The natives sometimes used pits for marsh elephants, but I have never seen elephants captured in them without being injured. They are so heavy that they hurt themselves in falling.
The marsh elephants in Sumatra are not worth the trouble of capturing, since they are weaker, shorter lived and less intelligent than the other breeds. They bring a low price, and consequently only the babies, which can be handled and transported easily, ever reach the market. The usual procedure among the natives is to shoot the mother and take the baby. It is little like the real game of elephant hunting as I found it later in Trengganu and Siam.
Dynamiting for fish is a great sport among the Malays. It is done, of course, with the maximum chatter and excitement. The natives line the banks of the stream while the dynamite is dropped; then they rush off, some in boats and some of them swimming, to collect the fish that come to the surface.
Drugging fish is another method of capturing them wholesale without much trouble or work. For this purpose the natives use a mixture of lime and the sap from the roots of a tuba tree. They first warn the villages down-stream so that the people will not drink any of the water; then they pour out the white liquid. It spreads over the stream, making the fish mâbok (drunk), as the Malays say. They rise to the surface and are gathered into boats.
"Since the monkey cannot pull his hand out of the bottle while it is doubled up and
he hasn't sense enough to let go, he sticks there until the hunter comes along."
Except for such annoyances as insects and leeches, which fastened on my skin as I walked through the jungle, those days in Sumatra were delightful. We hunted, fished and played games; there was nothing to worry about and little work to do. I was accepted by the natives as one of them. I wore a sârong over my trousers, and I shouldn't have worn the trousers if my skin had not been so sensitive to the insects. And, of course, I had shoes—the great barrier between castes. The Malays of the coast towns sometimes, but not often, wear shoes, and even then it is more a matter of showing-off than of being comfortable. I did everything possible to minimize the differences between us because I wanted to know them as they were, not as they thought I wanted them to be. They rapidly lost their self-consciousness and treated me simply as a companion who knew more than they knew—and who had a wonderful gun and a kit of medicine.
In jungle countries white men are always supposed to possess great knowledge of medicines and curing, and I was often called upon to act as doctor. At first the Malays showed some hesitancy at accepting the ôrang pûteh ûbat (the white man's medicine), but gradually they became less shy. During my circus days I had acquired a knowledge of first-aid work, and in the jungle I became quite proficient in patching people up. They believed that most ailments could be cured by their own doctors, who heal by magic, but they were glad to have me prescribe for them when magic failed to work.
The Malay doctor is supposed to be favored by a spirit, and a bâtu bintang (star stone) is given to him while he sleeps. In other words, he is made and not born a doctor. His bâtu bintang is just one of the charms with which he effects cures. He has a bâtu that is a petrified part of a Sembilan fish. Water in which this has been soaked is given to the patient to drink or is rubbed on the part affected. Other charms are the bâtu lintar (thunderbolt), which is rubbed wherever pain is felt; another bâtu, also a thunderbolt, which is a piece of crystal; a bâtu that is part of the backbone of some animal; one that is another piece of crystal; and, finally, the pelican stone. This last is the most highly prized of all. It secures the magic presence and coöperation of a spirit that dwells in the pelican. When the doctor is seeking to enter the spirit world in search of the soul of the sick person, this spirit ensures to him a swift passage there and back. The crystal stone is indispensable in discovering where the wandering soul of the sick person is in hiding and for detecting the spirit who is causing the sickness. And the backbone bâtu cures dysentery, indigestion and consumption.