At my animal house I found a letter from Mr. La Soeuf, the director of the Perth Zoölogical Gardens, saying that he was anxious to get a rhinoceros and asking what I could do for him. I did not want to go into the jungle again immediately, for I was afraid of a return of the fever, but I replied that I would see what could be done and I sent out word to all my native agents. Both Mr. La Souef and his father, who was director of the gardens at Melbourne, were great friends of mine, and their gardens had been my best market for animals. Quite naturally, I wanted to do everything I could to help them, and so, when word came from an agent in Trengganu that some rhinoceroses had been located there, I packed up my kit and started out.
At Trengganu, the Sultan welcomed me, and I spent several days with him, telling him what was happening in the world and discussing his problems. The problems were largely financial. He owed some money, and, knowing that he had something in the treasury, I asked why he did not pay his debts.
He thought for a time and then replied: "Well, I'll tell you. If I pay those people, they will forget about the Sultan of Trengganu. If I don't pay them, they'll never forget me."
The conversation turned to the subject of prisoners. On my way to the palace I had passed the cages where the prisoners were kept. Many of them were starving to death, for, unless their friends or family cared for them, they got no food.
"Why don't you feed them?" I asked.
"Why should I?" he replied. "If I feed them, my whole country will want to go to jail."
Finally, after he had satisfied his craving for sociability, he gave me my official permit to go into the interior and to force labor. I started out for the upper end of his state, bordering on Lower Siam. At the mouth of the River Stu, I found my agent; we gathered a crew of ten men and went up the river as far as we could. When the weeds became so thick that we could not force the boats through, we took to the jungle and began cutting our way to the mud-puddle where the rhinoceroses came to wallow.
We took great precautions in approaching the puddle, for once a rhinoceros gets the scent of a hunter, he is off through the jungle as fast as he can go. The hunter, who spots his animal and shoots, has an easy time of it; but the collector, who must capture, has a more difficult Job. He must work and build his trap at the very spot frequented by the animal and he must do so without exciting suspicion. A rhinoceros seldom charges when he sees a man, and his charge is not dangerous, for he is short-sighted and cannot gauge his direction accurately. Most often he runs, and it is almost impossible, even when the collector can find him again, to chase or lure him back to the trap.
No animals were at the puddle when we arrived, and I had a good opportunity to examine the location. Then we withdrew and I told the men how we should go about making the capture. We made camp, building platforms between the trees for living-quarters, and I detailed some of the men to the work on a rattan net, which measured twenty by fifteen feet, with meshes ten inches square. I felt that we had a good chance of getting a rhinoceros in a net-trap and should save ourselves much time and labor if we could do so. When the net was ready, we put it in position at a likely-looking approach—half on the ground, where the animal would step into it, and half suspended, so that he would catch it with his head and bring it down about him.
Then we turned our attention to malting pits. As I have explained before, a heavy animal was sure to injure himself in falling into a square pit such as the natives generally dug, and, of course, an injured animal would have been of no use to me. Hence the four pits that we dug around the puddle were made wedge-shaped, instead of square. They were six feet wide, at the top and tapered to three feet at the bottom; they were eight feet deep and ten feet long, with the approach tapering down so there would be the least possible chance that the beast would injure himself when he fell.