The two butterflies were carefully preserved along with those already captured, and as soon as the men were rested the boat moved on. Suddenly one of the Dyaks called out, "Mias! mias!" and pointed to the top of a tree where there was an animal of considerable size swinging from one limb to another, and apparently enjoying himself. Our friends looked, and the boys hardly needed the Doctor's explanation that "mias" is the Malay name of the famous orang-outang.
"What a splendid fellow he is," said Frank, "and what a pity we cannot capture him! He looks as though he was six feet high at least."
"The gentleman we met as we went down the coast of Sumatra told us that none had ever been caught more than four feet and two inches high," responded Fred, "but this one certainly appears as large as a full-grown man."
"Probably a measurement would tell a different story," Doctor Bronson remarked. "You know," he added, "that the largest fishes are the ones that are not caught, or get no farther than being hooked and lost."
By this time the mias had seen the boat and taken alarm for his safety; with one swing he dropped from the limb where he had been exercising, and disappeared in the forest. The boys wished to land and pursue him, but the Doctor told them it would not be of the least use to do so, as he could easily elude them. "He can travel faster," he continued, "among the limbs of the trees than you could possibly go on the ground; he swings from one tree to another, then runs to the farther side along the horizontal limbs, and is ready for another plunge. We will stick to the river, and lose no time in reaching our destination."
A FLOATING ISLAND.
At a bend in the stream they saw some cattle grazing on a little island a short distance from a large tree that stood with its roots in the water. The Doctor said the island was in all probability a floating one that was attached to the bottom of the river by the long roots of the plants growing on it, and so flexible that it could rise and fall with the tide, or with the floods and droughts of the river. "These floating islands," he explained, "are by no means uncommon in tropical countries; there are many in the Amazon and its tributaries, and some of them are miles in extent. They are generally attached to the river-bottom, but occasionally they become separated and float away with the current, and instances are not unknown of cattle being swept out to sea on them."