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Scoriandrus Directory 04
Page 06
Although the Orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great trees during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch as other apes, and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and especially to that of his seat. For this is provided with no callosites such as are possessed by many of the lower apes, and even by the Gibbons; and those bones of the pelvis, which are termed the ischia, and which form the solid framework of the surface on which the body rests in the sitting posture, are not expanded like those of the apes which possess callosities, but are more like those of man.
We left at 7.30 a.m. under a limpid sky of gorgeous cobalt blue. We passed two islands--one 700 m. long (Leda Island), the other 2,000 m. (Leander Island). When we had gone but 11,500 m. we arrived at one of the most beautiful bits of river scenery I have ever gazed upon--the spot where the immense S. Manoel River or Tres Barras or Paranatinga met the Arinos-Juruena. The latter river at that spot described a sharp turn from 20 deg. b.m. to 320 deg. b.m. We perceived a range of hills before us to the north. Close to the bank gradually appeared a large shed with a clearing near it on a high headland some 200 ft. above the level of the river where the stream turned. On the left bank, before we arrived at the meeting-place of those two giant streams, we found a tributary, the Bararati, 30 m. broad.
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