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LITTLE JOURNEYS

"the wild man of Borneo," which that good man, P. T. Barnum, kept alive by exhibiting a fine specimen. Barnum's original "wild-man" lived at Waltham, Massachusetts, and belonged to the Baptist Church. He recently died worth a hundred thousand dollars, which money he left to found a school for young ladies. The orang or mias, 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 LITTLE 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 on, 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, six feet across from finger to finger. Needless to say that Wallace had to do the skinning, and the mounting of the skeleton alone. His servants had chills of fear if asked

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LITTLE to approach it. The skeleton of this particular orang JOURNEYS

can now be seen in the Derby Museum.

In a few hours after killing his first orang Wallace heard a peculiar crying in the forest, and on search found a young one, evidently the baby of the one he had killed. The baby did not show any fear at all, evidently thinking it was with one of its kind, for it clung to him piteously, with an almost human tenderness.

Says Wallace: When handled or nursed it was very quiet and contented, but when laid down by itself would invariably cry; and for the first few nights was very restless and noisy. I soon found it necessary to wash the little mias as well. After I had done so a few times it came to like the operation, and after rolling in the mud would begin crying, and continue until I took it out and carried it to the spout, when it immediately became quiet, although it would wince a little at the first rush of the cold water, and make ridiculously wry faces while the stream was running over its head. It enjoyed the wiping and rubbing dry amazingly, and when I brushed its hair seemed to be perfectly happy, lying quite still with its arms and legs stretched out, while I thoroughly brushed the long hair of its back & arms. It was a never failing amusement to observe the curious changes of countenance by which it would express its approval, or dislike, of what was given to it. The poor little thing would lick its lips, draw in its cheeks, and turn up its eyes with an expression of the most supreme satisfaction, when it had a mouthful particularly to its taste. On the other hand, when its food was not sufficiently sweet or palatable, it would turn the mouthful about with its tongue for a moment, as if trying to extract what flavor

there was, and then push it all out between its lips. If LITTLE the same food was continued, it would proceed to JOURNEYS scream and kick about violently, exactly like a baby in a passion When I had had it about a month it began to exhibit some signs of learning to run alone. When laid upon the floor it would push itself along by its legs, or roll itself over, and thus make an unwieldy progression. When lying in the box it would lift itself up to the edge in an almost erect position, and once or twice succeeded in tumbling out. When left dirty or hungry, or otherwise neglected, it would scream violently till attended to, varied by a kind of coughing noise, very similar to that which is made by the adult animal. If no one was in the house, or its cries were not attended to, it would be quiet after a little while; but the moment it heard a footstep would begin again, harder than ever. It was very human.

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THE most lasting result of the wanderings
of Alfred Russel Wallace consists in his
having established what is known to us as
"The Wallace Line."

This line is a boundary that divides in a

geographical way that portion of Malaysia which belongs to the continent of Asia from that which belongs to the continent of Australia.

The Wallace Line covers a distance of more than four
thousand miles, and in this expanse there are three
islands in which Great Britain could be set down with-
out anywhere touching the sea.

Even yet the knowledge of the average American or
European is very hazy about the size and extent of

LITTLE the Malay Archipelago, although through our misunJOURNEYS derstanding with Spain, which loaded us up with possessions we have no use for, we have recently gotten

the geography down and dusted it off a bit.

There is a book by Mrs. Rose Innes, wife of an English official in the Far East, who among other entertaining things, tells of a head-hunter chief who taught her to speak Malay, and she, wishing to reciprocate, offered to teach him English, but the great man begged to be excused, saying, "Malay is spoken everywhere you go, east, west, north or south, but in all the world there are only twelve people who speak English," and he proceeded to name them.

Our assumptions are not quite so broad as this, but few of us realize that the Protestant Christian Religion stands fifth in the number of communicants, as compared with the other great religions, and that against our eighty millions of people in America, the Malay Archipelago has over two hundred millions.

Wallace found marked geological, botanical and zoological differences to denote his line. And from these things he proved that there had been great changes, through subsidence and elevation of the land. At no very remote geologic period, Asia extended clear to Borneo, and also included the Philippine Islands. This is shown by the fact that animal and vegetable life in all of these islands are almost identical with life on the mainland-the same trees, the same flowers, the same birds, the same animals.

As you go westward, however, you come to islands

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