We found the dead monkey, a young male, in the creek bed and sat down to examine it.  It was evidently a gibbon (Hylobates), for its long arms, round head, and tailless body were unmistakable, but in every species with which I was familiar the male was black.  This one was yellow and we knew it to be a prize.  That there were two other species in the herd was certain for we had seen both brown and gray monkeys as they dashed away among the trees, but the gibbons were far more interesting than the others.

Gibbons are probably the most primitive in skull and teeth of all the anthropoid, or manlike, apes,—­the group which also includes the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan.  They are apparently an earlier offshoot of the anthropoid stem, as held by most authorities, and the giant apes and man are probably a later branch.  Gibbons are essentially Oriental being found in India, Burma, Siam, Tonking, Borneo, and the Islands of Hainan, Sulu, Sumatra, and Java.

For the remainder of our stay at the Nam-ting River camp we devoted ourselves to hunting monkeys and soon discovered that the three species we had first seen were totally different.  One was the yellow gibbon, another a brown baboon (Macacus), and the third a huge gray ape with a long tail (Pygathrix) known as the “langur.”  On the first day all three species were together feeding upon some large green beans and this happened once again, but usually they were in separate herds.

The gibbons soon became extremely wild.  Although the same troop could usually be found in the valley where we had first discovered them, they chose hillsides where it was almost impossible to stalk them because of the thorny jungle.  Usually when they called, it was from the upper branches of a dead tree where they could not only scan every inch of the ground below, but were almost beyond the range of a shotgun.  Sometimes we climbed upward almost on our hands and knees, grasping vines and creepers, drawing ourselves up by tree trunks, crawling under thorny shrubs and bushes, slipping, falling, scrambling through the indescribable tangle.  We went forward only when the calls were echoing through the jungle, and stood motionless as the wailing ceased.  But in spite of all our care they would see or hear us.  Then in sudden silence there would be a tremor of the branches, splash after splash of leaves, and the herd would swing away through the trackless tree tops.

The gibbons are well named Hylobates or “tree-walkers” for they are entirely arboreal and, although awkward and almost helpless on the ground, once their long thin hands touch a branch they become transformed as by a miracle.

They launch themselves into space, catch a limb twenty feet away, swing for an instant, and hurl themselves to another.  It is possible for them to travel through the trees faster than a man can run even on open ground, and when one examines their limbs the reason is apparent.  The fore arms are so exceedingly long that the tips of the fingers can touch the ground when the animal stands erect, and the slender hands are longer than the feet.