As this was the last Mias I shot, and the last time I saw an adult living animal,
I will give a sketch of its general habits, and any other facts connected with it.
The Orangutan is known to inhabit Sumatra and Borneo, and there is every
reason to believe that it is confined to these two great islands, in the former of
which, however, it seems to be much more rare. In Borneo it has a wide range,
inhabiting many districts on the southwest, southeast, northeast, and northwest
coasts, but appears to be chiefly confined to the low and swampy forests. It
seems, at first sight, very inexplicable that the Mias should be quite unknown in
the Sarawak valley, while it is abundant in Sambas, on the west, and Sadong, on
the east. But when we know the habits and mode of life of the animal, we see a
sufficient reason for this apparent anomaly in the physical features of the
Sarawak district. In the Sadong, where I observed it, the Mias is only found
when the country is low level and swampy, and at the same time covered with a
lofty virgin forest. From these swamps rise many isolated mountains, on some of
which the Dyaks have settled and covered with plantations of fruit trees. These
are a great attraction to the Mias, which comes to feed on the unripe fruits, but
always retires to the swamp at night. Where the country becomes slightly
elevated, and the soil dry, the Mias is no longer to be found. For example, in all
the lower part of the Sadong valley it abounds, but as soon as we ascend above
the limits of the tides, where the country, though still flat, is high enough to be
dry, it disappears. Now the Sarawak valley has this peculiarity—the lower
portion though swampy, is not covered with a continuous lofty forest, but is
principally occupied by the Nipa palm; and near the town of Sarawak where the
country becomes dry, it is greatly undulated in many parts, and covered with
small patches of virgin forest, and much second-growth jungle on the ground,
which has once been cultivated by the Malays or Dyaks.
Now it seems probable to me that a wide extent of unbroken and equally lofty
virgin forest is necessary to the comfortable existence of these animals. Such
forests form their open country, where they can roam in every direction with as
much facility as the Indian on the prairie, or the Arab on the desert, passing from
tree-top to tree-top without ever being obliged to descend upon the earth. The
elevated and the drier districts are more frequented by man, more cut up by
clearings and low second-growth jungle—not adapted to its peculiar mode of
progression, and where it would therefore be more exposed to danger, and more
frequently obliged to descend upon the earth. There is probably also a greater
variety of fruit in the Mias district, the small mountains which rise like islands
out of it serving as gardens or plantations of a sort, where the trees of the
uplands are to be found in the very midst of the swampy plains.