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Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 01
Page 04
Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves. The old females and the immature males, on the other hand, are often met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves, and sometimes remain apart after they have given birth to their offspring. The young Orangs seem to remain unusually long under their mother's protection, probably in consequence of their slow growth. While climbing the mother always carries her young against her bosom, the young holding on by the mother's hair. At what time of life the Orang-Utan becomes capable of propagation, and how long the females go with young is unknown, but it is probable that they are not adult until they arrive at ten or fifteen years of age. A female which lived for five years at Batavia had not attained one-third the height of the wild females. It is probable that, after reaching adult years, they go on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years. The Dyaks tell of old Orangs which have not only lost all their teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb that they maintain themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage.
The fact, of course, is that it is just the variety of experience which makes life interesting,--toil and rest, pain and relief, hope and satisfaction, danger and security,--and if we once remove the idea of vicissitude from life, it all becomes an indolent and uninspiring affair. It is the process of change which is delightful, the finding out what we can do and what we cannot, going from ignorance to knowledge, from clumsiness to skill; even our relations with those whom we love are all bound up with the discoveries we make about them and the degree in which we can help them and affect them. What the mind instinctively dislikes is stationariness; and an existence in which there was nothing to escape from, nothing more to hope for, to learn, to desire, would be frankly unendurable.
We crossed two streamlets flowing north. After that we came upon a most troublesome patch of swampy land with high reeds in it, the leaves of which cut our hands like razors when we forced our way through them, struggling in mud and slush up to our knees, sometimes as high as our waists. A streamlet flowing north formed the marsh in that low place. The moment we had got out of the marsh the men threw themselves down and said they could go no farther. I pointed out to them that that spot was most unhealthy, and tried to persuade them to go some distance from that pestilential place. But they would not listen to reason, and there they would stay.
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