Our camp would have been delightful except for the wind which swept across the pass night and day in an unceasing gale.  My wife and I set a line of traps along a trail which led down the north side of the ridge, while Heller chose the opposite slope.  We were entranced with the forest.  The trees were immense spreading giants with interlaced branches that formed a solid roof of green 150 feet above the soft moss carpet underneath.  Every trunk was clothed in a smothering mass of vines and ferns and parasitic plants and, from the lower branches, thousands of ropelike creepers swayed back and forth with every breath of wind.  Below, the forest was fairly open save for occasional patches of dwarf bamboo, but the upper canopy was so close and dense that even at noon there was hardly more than a somber twilight beneath the trees.

Our first night on the pass was spent in a terrific gale which howled up the valley from the south and swept across the ridge in a torrent of wind.  The huge trees around us bent and tossed, and our tents seemed about to be torn to shreds.  Amid the crashing of branches and the roar of the wind it was impossible to hear each other speak and sleep was out of the question.  We lay in our bags expecting every second to have the covering torn from above our heads, but the tough cloth held, and at midnight the gale began to lull.  In the morning the sun was out in a cloudless sky but the wind never ceased entirely on the pass even though there was a breathless calm among the trees a few hundred feet below.

My wife and I had just returned from inspecting our line of traps about nine o’clock in the morning when the forest suddenly resounded with the “hu-wa,” “hu-wa,” “hu-wa” of the gibbons.  It seemed a long way off at first, but sounded louder and clearer every minute.  At the first note we seized our guns and dashed down the mountain-side, slipping, stumbling, and falling.  The animals were in the giant forest about five hundred feet below the summit of the ridge and as we neared them we moved cautiously from tree to tree, going forward only when they called.  It was one of the most exciting stalks I have ever made, for the wild, ringing howls seemed always close above our heads.

We were still a hundred yards away when a huge black monkey leaped out of a tree top just as I stepped from behind a bush, and he saw me instantly.  For a full half minute he hung suspended by one arm, his round head thrust forward staring intently; then launching himself into the air as though shot from a catapult he caught a branch twenty feet away, swung to another, and literally flew through the tree tops.  Without a sound save the swish of the branches and splash after splash in the leaves, the entire herd followed him down the hill.  It was out of range for the shotgun and my wife was ten feet behind me with the rifle, but had I had it in my hand I doubt if I could have hit one of those flying balls of fur.