However, the caravan ponies do try one's patience to the limit. They are trained only to follow a leader, and if one happens to be behind another horse it is well-nigh impossible to persuade it to pass. Beat or kick the beast as one will, it only backs up or crowds closely to the horse in front. On the first day out Heller, who was on a particularly bad animal, when trying to pass one of us began to cavort about like a circus rider, prancing from side to side and backward but never going forward. We shouted that we would wait for him to go on but he replied helplessly, "I can't, this horse isn't under my management," and we found very soon that our animals were not under our management either!

In a town near Ta-li Fu we were in front of the caravan with Wu and Heller: Wu stopped to buy a basket of mushrooms but his horse refused to move ahead. Beat as he would, the animal only backed in a circle, ours followed, and in a few moments we were packed together so tightly that it was impossible even to dismount. There we sat, helpless, to the huge delight of the villagers until rescued by a mafu. As soon as he led Wu's horse forward the others proceeded as quietly as lambs.

We paid forty cents (Mexican) a day for each animal while traveling, and fifteen or twenty cents when in camp, but the rate varies somewhat in different parts of the province, and in the west and south, along the Burma border fifty cents is the usual price. When a caravan is engaged the necessary mafus are included and they buy food for themselves and beans and hay for the animals.

Ever since leaving Yuen-nan Fu the cook we engaged at Paik-hoi had been a source of combined irritation and amusement. He was a lanky, effeminate gentleman who never before had ridden a horse, and who was physically and mentally unable to adapt himself to camp life. After five months in the field he appeared to be as helpless when the caravan camped for the night as when we first started, and he would stand vacantly staring until someone directed him what to do. But he was a good cook, when he wished to exert himself, and had the great asset of knowing a considerable amount of English. While we were in Ta-li Fu Mr. Evans overheard him relating his experiences on the road to several of the other servants. "Of course," said the cook, "it is a fine way to see the country, but the riding! My goodness, that's awful! After the third day I didn't know whether to go on or turn back—I was so sore I couldn't sit down even on a chair to say nothing of a horse!"

He had evidently fully made up his mind not to "see the country" that way for the day after we left Ta-li Fu en route to the Tibetan frontier he became violently ill. Although we could find nothing the matter with him he made such a good case for himself that we believed he really was quite sick and treated him accordingly. The following morning, however, he sullenly refused to proceed, and we realized that his illness was of the mind rather than the body. As he had accepted two months' salary in advance and had already sent it to his wife in Paik-hoi, we were in a position to use a certain amount of forceful persuasion which entirely accomplished its object and illness did not trouble him thereafter.

The loss of a cook is a serious matter to a large expedition. Good meals and varied food must be provided if the personnel is to work at its highest efficiency and cooking requires a vast amount of thought and time. In Yuen-nan natives who can cook foreign food are by no means easy to find and when our Paik-hoi gentleman finally left us upon our return to Ta-li Fu we were fortunate in obtaining an exceedingly competent man to take his place through the good offices of Mr. Hanna.



CHAPTER XII

LI-CHIANG AND "THE TEMPLE OF THE FLOWERS"

We left a part of our outfit with Mr. Evans at Ta-li Fu and with a new caravan of twenty-five animals traveled northward for six days to Li-chiang Fu. By taking a small road we hoped to find good collecting in the pine forests three days from Ta-li, but instead there was a total absence of animal life. The woods were beautiful, parklike stretches which in a country like California would be full of game, but here were silent and deserted. During the fourth and fifth days we were still in the forests, but on the sixth we crossed a pass 10,000 feet high and descended abruptly into a long marshy plain where at the far end were the gray outlines of Li-chiang dimly visible against the mountains.

Wu and I galloped ahead to find a temple for our camp, leaving Heller and my wife to follow. A few pages from her journal tell of their entry into the city.

We rode along a winding stone causeway and halted on the outskirts of the town to wait until the caravan arrived. Neither Roy nor Wu was in sight but we expected that the mafus would ask where they had gone and follow, for of course we could not speak a word of the language. Already there was quite a sensation as we came down the street, for our sudden appearance seemed to have stupefied the people with amazement. One old lady looked at me with an indescribable expression and uttered what sounded exactly like a long-drawn "Mon Dieu" of disagreeable surprise.

I tried smiling at them but they appeared too astonished to appreciate our friendliness and in return merely stared with open mouths and eyes. We halted and immediately the street was blocked by crowds of men, women, and children who poured out of the houses, shops, and cross-streets to gaze in rapt attention. When the caravan arrived we moved on again expecting that the mafus had learned where Roy had gone, but they seemed to be wandering aimlessly through the narrow winding streets. Even though we did not find a camping place we afforded the natives intense delight.

I felt as though I were the chief actor in a circus parade at home, but the most remarkable attraction there could not have equaled our unparalleled success in Li-chiang. On the second excursion through the town we passed down a cross-street, and suddenly from a courtyard at the right we heard feminine voices speaking English.

"It's a girl. No, it's a boy. No, no, can't you see her hair, it's a girl!" Just then we caught sight of three ladies, unmistakably foreigners although dressed in Chinese costume. They were Mrs. A. Kok, wife of the resident Pentecostal Missionary, and two assistants, who rushed into the street as soon as they had determined my sex and literally "fell upon my neck." They had not seen a white woman since their arrival there four years ago and it seemed to them that I had suddenly dropped from the sky.

While we were talking Wu appeared to guide us to the camp. They had chosen a beautiful temple with a flower-filled courtyard on the summit of a hill overlooking the city. It was wonderfully clean and when our beds, tables, and chairs were spread on the broad stone porch it seemed like a real home.

The next days were busy ones for us all, Roy and Heller setting traps, and I working at my photography. We let it be known that we would pay well for specimens, and there was an almost uninterrupted procession of men and boys carrying long sticks, on which were strung frogs, rats, toads, and snakes. They would simply beam with triumph and enthusiasm. Our fame spread and more came, bringing the most ridiculous tame things—pigeons, maltese cats, dogs, white rabbits, caged birds, and I even believe we might have purchased a girl baby or two, for mothers stood about with little brown kiddies on their backs as though they really would like to offer them to us but hardly dared.

The temple priest was a good looking, smooth-faced chap, and hidden under his coat he brought dozens of skins. I believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a rich man when we left!

The people are mostly tribesmen—Mosos, Lolos, Tibetans, and many others. The girls wear their hair "bobbed off" in front and with a long plait in back. They wash their hair once—on their wedding day—and then it is wrapped up in turbans for the rest of their lives. The Tibetan women dress their hair in dozens of tiny braids, but I don't believe there is any authority that they ever wash it, or themselves either.

Li-chiang was our first collecting camp and we never had a better one. On the morning after our arrival Heller found mammals in half his traps, and in the afternoon we each put out a line of forty traps which brought us fifty mammals of eleven species. This was a wonderful relief after the many days of travel through country devoid of animal life.

Our traps contained shrews of two species, meadow voles, Asiatic white-footed mice, spiny mice, rats, squirrels, and tree shrews. The small mammals were exceedingly abundant and easy to catch, but after the first day we began to have difficulty with the natives who stole our traps. We usually marked them with a bit of cotton, and the boys would follow an entire line down a hedge, taking every one. Sometimes they even brought specimens to us for sale which we knew had been caught in our stolen traps!

The traps were set under logs and stumps and in the grass where we found the "runways" or paths which mice, rats and voles often make. These animals begin to move about just after dark, and we usually would inspect our traps with a lantern about nine o'clock in the evening. This not only gave the trap a double chance to be filled but we also secured perfect specimens, for such species as mice and shrews are cannibalistic, and almost every night, if the specimens were not taken out early in the evening, several would be partly eaten.

Small mammals are often of much greater interest and importance scientifically than large ones, for, especially among the Insectivores, there are many primitive forms which are apparently of ancestral stock and throw light on the evolutionary history of other living groups.

Li-chiang is a fur market of considerable importance for the Tibetans bring down vast quantities of skins for sale and trade. Lambs, goats, foxes, cats, civets, pandas, and flying squirrels hang in the shops and there are dozens of fur dressers who do really excellent tanning.

This city is a most interesting place especially on market day, for its inhabitants represent many different tribes with but comparatively few Chinese. By far the greatest percentage of natives are the Mosos who are semi-Tibetan in their life and customs. They were originally an independent race who ruled a considerable part of northern Yuen-nan, and Li-chiang was their ancient capital. To the effeminate and "highly civilized" Chinese they are "barbarians," but we found them to be simple, honest and wholly delightful people. Many of those whom we met later had never seen a white woman, and yet their inherent decency was in the greatest contrast to that of the Chinese who consider themselves so immeasurably their superior.

The Mosos have large herds of sheep and cattle, and this is the one place in the Orient except in large cities along the coast, where we could obtain fresh milk and butter. As with the Tibetans, buttered tea and tsamba (parched oatmeal) are the great essentials, but they also grow quantities of delicious vegetables and fruit. Buttered tea is prepared by churning fresh butter into hot tea until the two have become well mixed. It is then thickened with finely ground tsamba until a ball is formed which is eaten with the fingers. The combination is distinctly good when the ingredients are fresh, but if the butter happens to be rancid the less said of it the better.

The natives of this region are largely agriculturists and raise great quantities of squash, turnips, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, onions, corn, peas, beans, oranges, pears, persimmons and nuts. While traveling we filled our saddle pockets with pears and English walnuts or chestnuts and could replenish our stock at almost any village along the road.

Everything was absurdly cheap. Eggs were usually about eight cents (Mexican) a dozen, and we could always purchase a chicken for an empty tin can, or two for a bottle. In fact, the latter was the greatest desideratum and when offers of money failed to induce a native to pose for the camera a bottle nearly always would decide matters in our favor.

In Li-chiang we learned that there was good shooting only twelve miles north of the city on the Snow Mountain range, the highest peak of which rises 18,000 feet above the sea. We left a part of our outfit at Mr. Kok's house and engaged a caravan of seventeen mules to take us to the hunting grounds. Mr. Kok assisted us in numberless ways while we were in the vicinity of Li-chiang and in other parts of the country. He took charge of all our mail, sending it to us by runners, loaned us money when it was difficult to get cash from Ta-li Fu and helped us to engage servants and caravans.

It had rained almost continually for five days and a dense gray curtain of fog hung far down in the valley, but on the morning of October 11 we awoke to find ourselves in another world. We were in a vast amphitheater of encircling mountains, white almost to their bases, rising ridge on ridge, like the foamy billows of a mighty ocean. At the north, silhouetted against the vivid blue of a cloudless sky, towered the great Snow Mountain, its jagged peaks crowned with gold where the morning sun had kissed their summits. We rode toward it across a level rock-strewn plain and watched the fleecy clouds form, and float upward to weave in and out or lose themselves in the vast snow craters beside the glacier. It was an inspiration, that beautiful mountain, lying so white and still in its cradle of dark green trees. Each hour it seemed more wonderful, more dominating in its grandeur, and we were glad to be of the chosen few to look upon its sacred beauty.

In the early afternoon we camped in a tiny temple which nestled into a grove of spruce trees on the outskirts of a straggling village. To the north the Snow Mountain rose almost above us, and on the east and south a grassy rock-strewn plain rolled away in gentle undulations to a range of hills which jutted into the valley like a great recumbent dragon.

A short time after our camp was established we had a visit from an Austrian botanist, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti, who had been in the village for two weeks. He had come to Yuen-nan for the Vienna Museum before the war, expecting to remain a year, but already had been there three. Surrounded as he was by Tibet, Burma, and Tonking, his only possible exit was by way of the four-month overland journey to Shanghai. He had little money and for two years had been living on Chinese food. He dined with us in the evening, and his enjoyment of our coffee, bread, kippered herring, and other canned goods was almost pathetic.

A week after our arrival Baron Haendel-Mazzetti left for Yuen-nan Fu and eventually reached Shanghai which, however, became a closed port to him upon China's entry into the European war. It is to be hoped that his collections, which must be of great scientific value and importance, have arrived at a place of safety long ere this book issues from the press.



CHAPTER XIII

CAMPING IN THE CLOUDS

We hired four Moso hunters in the Snow Mountain village. They were picturesque fellows, supposedly dressed in skins, but their garments were so ragged and patched that it was difficult to determine the original material of which they were made.

One of them was armed with a most extraordinary gun which, it was said, came from Tibet. Its barrel was more than six feet long, and the stock was curved like a golf stick. A powder fuse projected from a hole in the side of the barrel, and just behind it on the butt was fastened a forked spring. At his waist the man carried a long coil of rope, the slowly burning end of which was placed in the crotched spring. When about to shoot the native placed the butt of the weapon against his cheek, pressed the spring so that the burning rope's end touched the powder fuse, and off went the gun.

The three other hunters carried crossbows and poisoned arrows. They were remarkably good shots and at a distance of one hundred feet could place an arrow in a six-inch circle four times out of five. We found later that crossbows are in common use throughout the more remote parts of Yuen-nan and were only another evidence that we had suddenly dropped back into the Middle Ages and, with our high-power rifles and twentieth century equipment, were anachronisms.

The natives are able to obtain a good deal of game even with such primitive weapons for they depend largely upon dogs which bring gorals and serows to bay against a cliff and hold them until the men arrive. The dogs are a mongrel breed which appears to be largely hound, and some are really excellent hunters. White is the usual color but a few are mixed black and brown, or fox red. Hotenfa, one of our Mosos, owned a good pack and we all came to love its big red leader. This fine dog could be depended upon to dig out game if there was any in the mountains, but his life with us was short for he was killed by our first serow. Hotenfa was inconsolable and the tears he shed were in sincere sorrow for the loss of a faithful friend.

Almost every family owns a dog. Some of those we saw while passing through Chinese villages were nauseating in their unsightliness, for at least thirty per cent of them were more or less diseased. Barely able to walk, they would stagger across the street or lie in the gutter in indescribable filth. One longed to put them out of their misery with a bullet but, although they seemed to belong to nobody, if one was killed an owner appeared like magic to quarrel over the damages.

The dogs of the non-Chinese tribes were in fairly good condition and there seemed to be comparatively little disease among them. Our hunters treated their hounds kindly and fed them well, but the animals themselves, although loyal to their masters, manifested but little affection. In Korea dogs are eaten by the natives, but none of the tribes with which we came in contact in Yuen-nan used them for food.

On our first day in the temple Heller went up the Snow Mountain for a reconnoissance and the party secured a fine porcupine. It is quite a different animal from the American tree porcupines and represents a genus (Hystrix) which is found in Asia, Africa, and southern Europe. This species lives in burrows and, when hunting big game, we were often greatly annoyed to find that our dogs had followed the trail of one of these animals. We would arrive to see the hounds dancing about the burrow yelping excitedly instead of having a goral at bay as we had expected.

Some of the beautiful black and ivory white quills are more than twelve inches long and very sharp. A porcupine will keep an entire pack of dogs at bay and is almost sure to drive its murderous weapons into the bodies of some of them unless the hunters arrive in a short time. The Mosos eat the flesh which is white and fine.

Although we were only twelve miles from Li-chiang the traps yielded four shrews and one mouse which were new to our collection. The natives brought in three bats which we had not previously seen and began a thriving business in toads and frogs with now and then a snake.

The temple was an excellent place for small mammals but it was evident that we would have to move high up on the slopes of the mountain if gorals and other big game were to be obtained. Accordingly, while Heller prepared a number of bat skins we started out on horseback to hunt a camp site.

It was a glorious day with the sun shining brilliantly from a cloudless sky and just a touch of autumn snap in the air. We crossed the sloping rock-strewn plain to the base of the mountain, and discovered a trail which led up a forested shoulder to the right of the main peaks. An hour of steady climbing brought us to the summit of the ridge where we struck into the woods toward a snow-field on the opposite slope. The trail led us along the brink of a steep escarpment from which we could look over the valley and away into the blue distance toward Li-chiang. Three thousand feet below us the roof of our temple gleamed from among the sheltering pine trees, and the herds of sheep and cattle massed themselves into moving patches on the smooth brown plain.

We pushed our way through the spruce forest with the glistening snow bed as a beacon and suddenly emerged into a flat open meadow overshadowed by the ragged peaks. "What a perfectly wonderful place to camp," we both exclaimed. "If we can only find water, let's come tomorrow."

The hunters had assured us that there were no streams on this end of the mountain but we hoped to find a snow bank which would supply our camp for a few days at least. We rode slowly up the meadow reveling in the grandeur of the snow-crowned pinnacles and feeling very small and helpless amid surroundings where nature had so magnificently expressed herself.

At the far end of the meadow we discovered a dry creek bed which led upward through the dense spruce forest. "Where water has been, water may be again," we argued and, leading the horses, picked our way among the trees and over fallen logs to a fairly open hill slope where we attempted to ride, but our animals were nearly done. After climbing a few feet they stood with heaving sides and trembling legs, the breath rasping through distended nostrils. We felt the altitude almost as badly as the horses for the meadow itself was twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea and the air was very thin.

There seemed to be no hope of finding even a suitable snow bank when it was slowly borne in upon us that the subdued roaring in our ears was the sound of water and not the effect of altitude as we both imagined. Above and to the left was a sheer cliff, hundreds of feet in height, and as we toiled upward and emerged beyond timber line we caught a glimpse of a silver ribbon streaming down its face. It came from a melting snow crater and we could follow its course with our eyes to where it swung downward along a rock wall not far from the upper end of the meadow. It was so hidden by the trees that had we not climbed above timber line, it never would have been discovered.

This solved the question of our camp and we looked about us happily. On the way through the forest we had noticed small mammal runways under almost every log and, when we stood above the tree limit, the grassy slope was cut by an intricate network of tiny tunnels. These were plainly the work of a meadow vole (Microtus) and at this altitude it certainly would prove to be a species new to our collection.

The sun had already dropped behind the mountain and the meadow was in shadow when we reached it again on our homeward way. By five o'clock we were in the temple eating a belated tiffin and making preparations for an early start. But our hopes were idle, for in the morning three of the mules had strayed, and we did not arrive at the meadow until two o'clock in the afternoon.

Our camp was made just at the edge of the spruce forest a few hundred yards from the snow stream. As soon as the tents were up we climbed to the grassy slope above timber line, with Heller, to set a string of traps in the vole runways and under logs and stumps in the forest.

The hunters made their camp beside a huge rock a short distance away and slept in their ragged clothes without a blanket or shelter of any kind. It was delightfully warm, even at this altitude, when the sun was out, but as soon as it disappeared we needed a fire and the nights were freezing cold; yet the natives did not seem to mind it in the slightest and refused our offer of a canvas tent fly.

We never will forget that first night on the Snow Mountain. As we sat at dinner about the campfire we could see the somber mass of the forest losing itself in the darkness, and felt the unseen presence of the mighty peaks standing guard about our mountain home. We slept, breathing the strong, sweet perfume of the spruce trees and dreamed that we two were wandering alone through the forest opening the treasure boxes of the Wild.



CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST GORAL

We were awakened before daylight by Wu's long drawn call to the hunters, "L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o." The steady drum of rain on our tent shot a thrill of disappointment through me as I opened my eyes, but before we had crawled out of our sleeping-bags and dressed it lessened to a gentle patter and soon ceased altogether. It left a cold, gray morning with dense clouds weaving in and out among the peaks but, nevertheless, I decided to go out with the hunters to try for goral.

Two of the men took the dogs around the base of a high rock shoulder sparsely covered with scrub spruce while I went up the opposite slope accompanied by the other two. We had not been away from camp half an hour when the dogs began to yelp and almost immediately we heard them coming around the summit of the ridge in our direction. The hunters made frantic signs for me to hurry up the steep slope but in the thin air with my heart pounding like a trip hammer I could not go faster than a walk.

We climbed about three hundred yards when suddenly the dogs appeared on the side of the cliff near the summit. Just in front of them was a bounding gray form. The mist closed in and we lost both dogs and animals but ten minutes later a blessed gust of wind drifted the fog away and the goral was indistinctly visible with its back to a rock ledge facing the dogs. The big red leader of the pack now and then dashed in for a nip at the animal's throat but was kept at bay by its vicious lunges and sharp horns.

It was nearly three hundred yards away but the cloud was drifting in again and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope, frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and the first two shots spattered the loose rock about a foot low. For the third I got a dead rest over a stone and as the crash of the little Mannlicher echoed up the gorge, the goral threw itself into the air whirling over and over onto the rocks below.

The hunters, mad with excitement, dashed up the hill and down into the stream bed, and when I arrived the goral lay on a grassy ledge beside the water. The animal was stone dead, for my bullet had passed through its lungs, and, although the front teeth had been smashed on the rocks, its horns were uninjured and the beautiful gray coat was in perfect condition. It so happened that this ram was the largest which we killed on the entire trip.

When the hunters were carrying the goral to camp we met Yvette and Heller on their way to visit the traps just below snow line, and she returned with me to photograph the animal and to watch the ceremonies which I knew would be performed. One of the natives cut a leafy branch, placed the goral upon it and at the first cut chanted a prayer. Then laying several leaves one upon the other he sliced off the tip of the heart, wrapped it carefully in the leaves and placed it in a nearby tree as an offering to the God of the Hunt.

I have often seen the Chinese and Korean hunters perform similar ceremonies at the death of an animal, and the idea that it is necessary to propitiate the God of the Hunt is universal. When I was shooting in Korea in 1912, and also in other parts of China, if luck had been against us for a few days the hunters would invariably ask me to buy a chicken, or some animal to sacrifice for "good joss."

After each dog had had a taste of the goral's blood we again climbed the cliff at the end of the meadow. When we were nearly 2,000 feet above camp the clouds shut in and, as the impenetrable gray curtain wrapped itself about us, we could only sit quietly and wait for it to drift away.

After an hour the fog began to thin and the men sent the hounds toward a talus slope at the base of the highest peak. Almost immediately the big red dog picked up a trail and started across the loose rock with the pack yelping at his heels. We followed as rapidly as possible over such hard going but before we reached the other side the dogs had rounded a sharp pinnacle and disappeared far below us. Expecting that the goral would swing about the base of the peak the hunters sent me back across the talus to watch for a shot, but the animal ran down the valley and into a heavily wooded ravine where the dogs lost his trail only a short distance above camp.

I returned to find that Heller had secured a rich haul from the traps. As we supposed, the runways which Yvette and I had discovered above timber line were made by a meadow vole (Microtus) and in the forest almost every trap had caught a white-footed mouse (Apodemus). He also had several new shrews and we caught eight different species of these important little animals at this one camp.

Wu, the interpreter, hearing us speak of shrews, came to me one day in great perplexity with his Anglo-Chinese dictionary. He had looked up the word "shrew" and found that it meant "a cantankerous woman!"

The following day Heller went out with the hunters and saw two gorals but did not get a shot. In the meantime Yvette and I ran the traps and prepared the small mammals. While we were far up on the mountain-side, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti appeared armed with ropes and an alpine snow ax. He was about to attempt to climb the highest peak which had never been ascended but the drifts turned him back several hundred feet from the summit. He dined at our camp and as all of us carefully refrained from "war talk" we spent a very pleasant evening. During his three years in Yuen-nan he had explored and mapped many sections of the province which had not been visited previously by foreigners and from him we obtained much valuable information.

On the third morning we were up before daylight and I left with the hunters in the gray dawn. We climbed steadily for an hour after leaving camp and, when well up on the mountain-side, skirted the base of a huge peak through a dense forest of spruce and low bamboo thickets, emerging upon a steep grassy meadow; this abutted on a sheer rock wall at the upper end, and below ran into a thick evergreen forest.

As we entered the meadow the big red leading dog, trotted off by himself toward the rock wall above us, and in a few moments we heard his sharp yelps near the summit. Instantly the pack was off stringing out in a long line up the hillside.

We had nearly crossed the open slope and were standing on the edge of a deep gully when the dogs gave tongue and as soon as the hunters were sure they were coming in our direction we hurried to the bottom of the gorge and began the sharp ascent on the other side. It was almost straight up and before we had gone a hundred feet we were all gasping for breath and my legs seemed like bars of lead, but the staccato yelps of the dogs sounding closer and closer kept us going.

When we finally dropped on the summit of the hill I was absolutely done. I lay flat on my back for a few minutes and got to my knees just as the goral appeared on the opposite cliff. The sight of the magnificent animal bounding like rubber from ledges which his feet seemed hardly to touch down the face of a sheer wall, will remain in my memory as long as I live. He seemed the very spirit of the mountains, a thing born of peaks and crags, vibrant with the breath of the clouds. Selecting a spot which he must touch in the next flying leap, I waited until his body darkened the sights and then pulled the trigger.

The game little brute collapsed, then struggled to his feet, and with a tremendous leap landed on a projecting shelf of rock four yards below. Instantly I fired again and he sank down in a crumpled gray mass not two feet from the edge of the precipice which fell away in a dizzy drop of six hundred feet.

The dogs were on him long before we had worked our way down the canon and up to the shelf where he lay. He was a fine ram nearly as large as the first one I had killed. I wanted to rest the dogs for they were very tired from their two days of hunting, so I decided to return to camp with the men. On the way a second goral was started but it swung about the summit of the wooded ridge instead of coming in my direction, giving one of the hunters a shot with his crossbow, which he missed.

It was a beautiful day. Above us the sky was clear and blue but the clouds still lay thickly over the meadow and the camp was invisible. The billowy masses clung to the forest line, but from the slopes above them we could look far across the valley into the blue distance where the snow-covered summits of range after range of magnificent mountains lay shining in the sun like beaten silver. There was a strange fascination about those mountains, and I thrilled with the thought that for twelve long months I was free to roam where I willed and explore their hidden mysteries.



CHAPTER XV

MORE GORALS

Both gorals were fine old rams with perfect horns. Their hair was thick and soft, pale olive-buff tipped with brownish, and the legs on the "cannon bones" were buff-yellow like the margins of the throat patches. Their color made them practically invisible against the rocks and when I killed the second goral my only distinct impression as he dashed down the face of the precipice, was of four yellowish legs entirely separated from a body which I could hardly see.

This invisibility, combined with the fact that the Snow Mountain gorals lived on almost inaccessible cliffs thickly covered with scrub spruce forest, made "still hunting" impossible. In fact, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti, who had explored this part of the Snow Mountains fairly thoroughly in his search for plants, had never seen a goral, and did not know that such an animal existed there.

Heller hunted for two days in succession and, although he saw several gorals, he was not successful in getting one until we had been in camp almost a week. His was a young male not more than a year old with horns about an inch long. It was a valuable addition to our collection for I was anxious to obtain specimens of various ages to be mounted as a "habitat group" in the Museum and we lacked only a female.

The preparation of the group required the greatest care and study. First, we selected a proper spot to reproduce in the Museum, and Yvette took a series of natural color photographs to guide the artist in painting the background. Next she made detail photographs of the surroundings. Then we collected portions of the rocks and typical bits of vegetation such as moss and leaves, to be either dried or preserved in formalin. In a large group, perhaps several thousand leaves will be required, but the field naturalist need select typical specimens of only five or six different sizes from each of which a plaster mold can be made at the Museum and the leaves reproduced in wax.

After two days of rain during which I had a hard and unsuccessful hunt for serows we decided to return to the temple at the foot of the mountain which was nearer to the forests inhabited by these animals. We had already been in our camp on the meadow for nine days and, besides the gorals, had gathered a large and valuable collection of small mammals. The shrews were especially varied in species and, besides a splendid series of meadow voles, Asiatic mice and rats, we obtained a new weasel and a single specimen of a tiny rock-cony or little chief hare, an Asiatic genus (Ochotona) which is also found in the western part of North America on the high slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Although we set dozens of traps among the rocks we did not get another on the entire expedition nor did we see indications of their presence in other localities.

The almost complete absence of carnivores at this camp was a great surprise. Except for weasels we saw no others and the hunters said that foxes or civets did not occur on this side of the mountain even though food was abundant.

On the day before we went to the temple I had a magnificent hunt. We left camp at daylight in a heavy fog and almost at once the dogs took up a serow trail. We heard them coming toward us as we stood at the upper edge of a little meadow and expected the animal to break cover any moment, but it turned down the mountain and the hounds lost the trail in the thick spruce woods.

We climbed slowly toward the cliffs until we were well above the clouds, which lay in a thick white blanket over the camp, and headed for the canon where I had shot my second goral. Hotenfa wished to go lower down into the forests but I prevailed upon him to stay along the open slopes and, while we were resting, the big red dog suddenly gave tongue on a ridge above and to the right of us. It was in the exact spot where my second goral had been started and we were on the qui vive when the rest of the pack dashed up the mountain-side to join their leader.

In a few moments they all gave tongue and we heard them swinging about in our direction. Just then the clouds, which had been lying in a solid bank below us, began to drift upward in a long, thin finger toward the canon. On and on it came, and closer sounded the yelps of the dogs. I was trembling with impatience and swearing softly as the gray vapor streamed into the gorge. The cloud thickened, sweeping rapidly up the ravine, until we were enveloped so completely that I could hardly see the length of my gun barrel. A moment later we heard the goral leaping down the cliff not a hundred yards away.

With the rifle useless in my hands I listened to each hoof beat and the stones which his flying feet sent rattling into the gorge. Then the dogs came past, and we heard them follow down the rocks, their yelps growing fainter and fainter in the valley far below. The goral was lost, and as though the Fates were laughing at us, ten minutes later a puff of wind sucked the cloud out of the canon as swiftly as it had come, and above us shone a sky as clear and blue as a tropic sea.

Hotenfa's disgust more than equaled my own for I had loaned him my three-barrel gun (12 gauge and .303 Savage) and he was as excited as a child with a new toy. He was a remarkably intelligent man and mastered the safety catches in a short time even though he had never before seen a breach-loading gun.

There was nothing to do but hurry down the mountain for the dogs might bring the goral to bay on one of the cliffs below us, and in twenty minutes we stood on a ridge which jutted out from the thick spruce forest. One of the hunters picked his way down the rock wall while Hotenfa and I circled the top of the spur.

We had not gone a hundred yards when the hunter shouted that a goral was running in our direction. Hotenfa reached the edge of the ridge before me, and I saw him fire with the three-barrel gun at a goral which disappeared into the brush. His bullet struck the dirt only a few feet behind the animal although it must have been well beyond a hundred yards and almost straight below us.

Hardly had we drawn back when a yell from the other hunter brought us again to the edge of the cliff just in time to see a second goral dash into the forest a good three hundred yards away in the very bottom of the gorge.

Rather disappointed we continued along the ridge and Hotenfa made signs which said as plainly as words, "I told you so. The gorals are not on the peaks but down in the forest. We ought to have come here first."

There were not many moments for regret, however, for this was "our busy day." Suddenly a burst of frantic yelps from the red dog turned us off to the left and we heard him nearing the summit of the spur which we had just left. One of the other hunters was standing there and his crossbow twanged as the goral passed only a few yards from him, but the wicked little poisoned dart stuck quivering into a tree a few inches above the animal's back.

The goral dashed over the ridge almost on top of the second hunter who was too surprised to shoot and only yelled that it was coming toward us on the cliff below. Hotenfa leaped from rock to rock, almost like a goat himself, and dashed through the bushes toward a jutting shelf which overhung the gorge.

We reached the rim at the same moment and saw a huge ram standing on a narrow ledge a hundred yards below. I fired instantly and the noble animal, with feet wide spread, and head thrown back, launched himself into space falling six hundred feet to the rocks beneath us.

As the goral leaped Hotenfa seemed suddenly to go insane. Yelling with joy, he threw his arms about my neck, rubbing my face with his and pounding me on the back until I thought he would throw us both off the cliff. I was utterly dumfounded but seized his three-barrel gun to unload it for in his excitement there was imminent danger that he would shoot either himself or me.

Then I realized what it was all about. We had both fired simultaneously and neither had heard the other's shot. By mistake Hotenfa had discharged a load of buckshot and it was my bullet which had killed the goral but his joy was so great that I would not for anything have disillusioned him.

It was a half hour's hard work to get to the place where the goral had fallen. The dogs were already there lying quietly beside the animal when we arrived. My bullet had entered the back just in front of the hind leg and ranged forward through the lungs flattening itself against the breast bone; the jacket had split, one piece tearing into the heart, so that the ram was probably dead before it struck the rocks.

I photographed the goral where it lay and after it had been eviscerated, and the hunters had performed their ceremonies to the God of the Hunt, I sent one of them back with it while Hotenfa and I worked toward the bottom of the canon in the hope of finding the other animals.

It was a delightfully warm day and Hotenfa told me in his vivid sign language that the gorals were likely to be asleep on the sunny side of the ravine; therefore we worked up the opposite slope.

It was the hardest kind of climbing and for two hours we plodded steadily upward, clinging by feet and hands to bushes and rocks, and were almost exhausted when we reached a small open patch of grass about two thirds of the way to the summit.

We rested for half an hour and, after a light tiffin, toiled on again. I had not gone thirty feet, and Hotenfa was still sitting down, when I saw him wave his arm excitedly and throw up his gun to shoot. I leaped down to his side just as he fired at a big female goral which was sound asleep in an open patch of grass on the mountain-side.

Hotenfa's bullet broke the animal's foreleg at the knee but without the slightest sign of injury she dashed down the cliff. I fired as she ran, striking her squarely in the heart, and she pitched headlong into the bushes a hundred feet below.

How Hotenfa managed to pack that animal to the summit of the ridge I never can understand, for with a light sack upon my back and a rifle it was all I could do to pull myself up the rocks. He was completely done when we finally threw ourselves on the grass at the edge of the meadow which we had left in the morning. Hotenfa chanted his prayer when we opened the goral, but the God of the Hunt missed his offering for my bullet had smashed the heart to a pulp.

On our way back to camp the red dog, although dead tired, disappeared alone into the heavy forest below us. Suddenly we heard his deep bay coming up the hill in our direction. Hotenfa and I dropped our burdens and ran to an opening in the forest where we thought the animal must pass.

Instead of coming out where we expected, the dog appeared higher up at the heels of a crested muntjac (Elaphodus), which was bounding along at full speed, its white flag standing straight up over its dark bluish back. I had one chance for a shot at about one hundred and fifty yards as the pair crossed a little opening in the trees, but it was too dangerous to shoot for, had I missed the deer, the dog certainly would have been killed.

I was heart-broken over losing this animal, for it is an exceedingly rare species, but a few days later a shepherd brought in another which had been wounded by one of our Lolo hunters and had run down into the plains to die.

When we reached the hill above camp Yvette ran out to meet us, falling over logs and bushes in her eagerness to see what we were carrying. No dinner which I have ever eaten tasted like the one we had of goral steak that night and after a smoke I crawled into my sleeping bag, dead tired in body but with a happy heart.



CHAPTER XVI

THE SNOW MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

On October 22, we moved to the foot of the mountain and camped in the temple which we had formerly occupied. This was directly below the forests inhabited by serow, and we expected to devote our efforts exclusively toward obtaining a representative series of these animals.

Unfortunately I developed a severe infection in the palm of my right hand almost immediately, and had it not been for the devoted care of my wife I should not have left China alive. Through terrible nights of delirium when the poison was threatening to spread over my entire body, she nursed me with an utter disregard of her own health and slept only during a few restless hours of complete exhaustion. For three weeks I could do no work but at last was able to bend my "trigger finger" and resume hunting although I did not entirely recover the use of my hand for several months.

However, the work of the expedition by no means ceased because of my illness. Mr. Heller continued to collect small mammals with great energy and the day after we arrived at the temple we engaged eight new native hunters. These were Lolos, a wandering unit from the independent tribe of S'suchuan and they proved to be excellent men.

The first serow was killed by Hotenfa's party on our third day in the temple. Heller went out with the hunters but in a few hours returned alone. A short time after he had left the natives the dogs took up the trail of a huge serow and followed it for three miles through the spruce forest. They finally brought the animal to bay against a cliff and a furious fight ensued. One dog was ripped wide open, another received a horn-thrust in the side, and the big red leader was thrown over a cliff to the rocks below. More of the hounds undoubtedly would have been killed had not the hunters arrived and shot the animal.

The men brought the serow in late at night but our joy was considerably dampened by the loss of the red dog. Hotenfa carried him in his arms and laid him gently on a blanket in the temple but the splendid animal died during the night. His master cried like a child and I am sure that he felt more real sorrow than he would have shown at the loss of his wife; for wives are much easier to get in China than good hunting dogs.

The serow was an adult male, badly scarred from fighting, and had lost one horn by falling over a cliff when he was killed. He was brownish black, with rusty red lower legs and a whitish mane. His right horn was nine and three-quarters inches in length and five and three-quarters inches in circumference at the base and the effectiveness with which he had used his horns against the dogs demonstrated that they were by no means only for ornaments. In the next chapter the habits and relationships of the gorals and serows will be considered more fully.

On the morning following the capture of the first serow the last rain of the season began and continued for nine days almost without ceasing. The weather made hunting practically impossible for the fog hung so thickly over the woods that one could not see a hundred feet and Heller found that many of his small traps were sprung by the raindrops. The Lolos had disappeared, and we believed that they had returned to their village, but they had been hunting in spite of the weather and on the fifth day arrived with a fine male serow in perfect condition. It showed a most interesting color variation for, instead of red, the lower legs were buff with hardly a tinge of reddish.

November 2, the sun rose in an absolutely cloudless sky and during the remainder of the winter we had as perfect weather as one could wish. Yvette's constant nursing and efficient surgery combined with the devotion of our interpreter, Wu, had checked the spread of the poison in my hand and my nights were no longer haunted with the strange fancies of delirium, but I was as helpless as a babe. I could do nothing but sit with steaming cloths wrapped about my arm and rail at the fate which kept me useless in the temple.

The Lolos killed a third serow on the mountain just above our camp but the animal fell into a rock fissure more than a hundred feet deep and was recovered only after a day's hard work. The men wove a swinging ladder from tough vines, climbed down it, and drew the serow bodily up the cliff; as it weighed nearly three hundred pounds this was by no means an easy undertaking.

Our Lolo hunters were tall, handsome fellows led by a slender young chief with patrician features who ruled his village like an autocrat with absolute power of life and death. The Lolos are a strange people who at one time probably occupied much of the region south of the Yangtze River but were pushed south and west by the Chinese and, except in one instance, now exist only in scattered units in the provinces of Kwei-chau and Yuen-nan.

In S'suchuan the Lolos hold a vast territory which is absolutely closed to the Chinese on pain of death and over which they exercise no control. Several expeditions have been launched against the Lolos but all have ended in disaster.

Only a few weeks before we arrived in Yuen-nan a number of Chinese soldiers butchered nearly a hundred Lolos whom they had encountered outside the independent territory, and in reprisal the Lolos burned several villages almost under the walls of a fortified city in which were five hundred soldiers, massacred all the men and boys, and carried off the women as slaves.

The pure blood Lolos "are a very fine tall race, with comparatively fair complexions, and often with straight features, suggesting a mixture of Mongolian with some more straight-featured race. Their appearance marks them as closely connected by race with the eastern Tibetans, the latter being, if anything, rather the bigger men of the two." [Footnote: "Yuen-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze," by Major H.R. Davies, 1909, p. 389.] They are great wanderers and over a very large part of Yuen-nan form the bulk of the hill population, being the most numerous of all the non-Chinese tribes in the province.

Like almost every race which has been conquered by the Chinese or has come into continual contact with them for a few generations, the Lolos of Yuen-nan, where they are in isolated villages, are being absorbed by the Chinese. We found, as did Major Davies, that in some instances they were giving up their language and beginning to talk Chinese even among themselves. The women already had begun to tie up their feet in the Chinese fashion and even disliked to be called Lolos.

Those whom we employed were living entirely by hunting and, although we found them amiable enough, they were exceedingly independent. They preferred to hunt alone, although they recognized what an increased chance for game our high-power rifles gave them, and eventually left us while I was away on a short trip, even though we still owed them considerable money.

The Lolos are only one of the non-Chinese tribes of Yuen-nan. Major Davies has considered this question in his valuable book to which I have already referred, and I cannot do better than quote his remarks here.

The numerous non-Chinese tribes that the traveler encounters in western China, form perhaps one of the most interesting features of travel in that country. It is safe to assert that in hardly any other part of the world is there such a large variety of languages and dialects, as are to be heard in the country which lies between Assam and the eastern border of Yuen-nan and in the Indo-Chinese countries to the south of this region.

The reason of this is not hard to find. It lies in the physical characteristics of the country. It is the high mountain ranges and the deep swift-flowing rivers that have brought about the differences in customs and language, and the innumerable tribal distinctions, which are so perplexing to the enquirer into Indo-Chinese ethnology.

A tribe has entered Yuen-nan from their original Himalayan or Tibetan home, and after increasing in numbers have found the land they have settled on not equal to their wants. The natural result has been the emigration of part of the colony. The emigrants, having surmounted pathless mountains and crossed unbridged rivers on extemporized rafts, have found a new place to settle in, and have felt no inclination to undertake such a journey again to revisit their old home.

Being without a written character in which to preserve their traditions, cut off from all civilizing influence of the outside world, and occupied merely in growing crops enough to support themselves, the recollection of their connection with their original ancestors has died out. It is not then surprising that they should now consider themselves a totally distinct race from the parent stock. Inter-tribal wars, and the practice of slave raiding so common among the wilder members of the Indo-Chinese family, have helped to still further widen the breach. In fact it may be considered remarkable that after being separated for hundreds, and perhaps in some case for thousands, of years, the languages of two distant tribes of the same family should bear to each other the marked general resemblance which is still to be found.

The hilly nature of the country and the consequent lack of good means of communication have also naturally militated against the formation of any large kingdoms with effective control over the mountainous districts. Directly we get to a flat country with good roads and navigable rivers, we find the tribal distinctions disappear, and the whole of the inhabitants are welded into a homogeneous people under a settled government, speaking one language.

Burmese as heard throughout the Irrawaddy valley is the same everywhere. A traveler from Rangoon to Bhamo will find one language spoken throughout his journey, but an expedition of the same length in the hilly country to the east or to the west of the Irrawaddy valley would bring him into contact with twenty mutually unintelligible tongues.

The same state of things applies to Siam and Tong-king—one nation speaking one language in the flat country and a Tower of Babel in the hills (loc. cit., pp. 332-333).



CHAPTER XVII

GORALS AND SEROWS

Gorals and serows belong to the subfamily Rupicaprinae which is an early mountain-living offshoot of the Bovidae; it also includes the chamois, takin, and the so-called Rocky Mountain goat of America. The animals are commonly referred to as "goat-antelopes" in order to express the intermediate position which they apparently hold between the goats and antelopes. They are also sometimes called the Rupicaprine antelopes from the scientific name of the chamois (Rupicapra).

The horns of all members of the group are finely ridged, subcylindrical and are present in both sexes, being almost as long in the female as in the male. Although no one would suspect that the gorals are more closely related to the takins than to the serows, which they resemble superficially, such seems to be the case, but the cranial differences between the two genera are to a certain extent bridged over by the skull of the small Japanese serow (Capricornulus crispus). This species is most interesting because of its intermediate position. In size it is larger than a goral but smaller than a serow; its long coat and its horns resemble those of a goral but it has the face gland and short tail of a serow. It is found in Japan, Manchuria and southern Siberia.

The principal external difference between the gorals and serows, besides that of size, is in the fact that the serows have a short tail and a well developed face gland, which opens in front of the eyes by a small orifice, while the gorals have a long tail and no such gland.

In the cylindrical form of their horns the serows are similar to some of the antelopes but in their clumsy build, heavy limbs and stout hoofs as well as in habits they resemble goats. The serow has a long, melancholy-looking face and because of its enormous ears the Chinese in Fukien Province refer to it as the "wild donkey" but in Yuen-nan it is called "wild cow."

The specific relationships of the serows are by no means satisfactorily determined. Mr. Pocock, Superintendent of the London Zooelogical Society's Gardens, has recently devoted considerable study to the serows of British India and considers them all to be races of the single species Capricornis sumatrensis. With this opinion I am inclined to agree, although I have not yet had sufficient time in which to thoroughly study the subject in the light of our new material.

These animals differ most strikingly in external coloration, and fall into three groups all of which partake more or less of the characters of each other. Chinese serows usually have the lower legs rusty red, while in Indian races they are whitish, and black in the southern Burma and Malayan forms.

The serows which we killed upon the Snow Mountain can probably be referred to Capricornis sumatrensis milne-edwardsi, those of Fukien obtained by Mr. Caldwell represent the white-maned serow Capricornis sumatrensis argyrochaetes and one which I shot in May, 1917, near Teng-yueh, not far from the Burma frontier, is apparently an undescribed form.

Our specimens have brought out the fact that a remarkable individual variation exists in the color of the legs of these animals; this character was considered to be of diagnostic value, and probably is in some degree, but it is by no means as reliable as it was formerly supposed to be.

Two of the serows killed on the Snow Mountain have the lower legs rusty red, while in two others these parts are buff colored. The animals, all males of nearly the same age, were taken on the same mountain, and virtually at the same time. Their skulls exhibit no important differences and there is no reason to believe that they represent anything but an extreme individual variation.

The two specimens obtained by Mr. Caldwell at Yen-ping are even more surprising. The old female is coal black, but the young male is distinctly brownish-black with a chestnut stripe from the mane to the tail along the mid-dorsal line where the hairs of the back form a ridge. The horns of the female are nearly parallel for half their extent and approach each other at the tips; their surfaces are remarkably smooth. The horns of the young male diverge like a V from the skull and are very heavily ridged. The latter character is undoubtedly due to youth.

These serows are an excellent example of the necessity for collecting a large number of specimens from the same locality. Only by this means is it possible to learn how the species is affected by age, sex and individual variation and what are its really important characters. In the case of the gorals, our Expedition obtained at Hui-yao such a splendid series of all ages that we have an unequaled opportunity for intelligent study. Serows are entirely Asian and found in China, Japan, India, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.

On the Snow Mountain we found them living singly at altitudes of from 9,000 to 13,000 feet in dense spruce forests, among the cliffs. The animals seemed to be fond of sleeping under overhanging rocks, and we were constantly finding beds which gave evidence of very extensive use. Apparently serows seldom come out into the open, but feed on leaves and grass while in the thickest cover, so that it is almost impossible to kill them without the aid of dogs or beaters.

Sometimes a serow will lead the dogs for three or four miles, and eventually lose them or it may turn at bay and fight the pack after only a short chase; a large serow is almost certain to kill several of the hounds if in a favorable position with a rock wall at its back. The animal can use its strong curved horns with deadly effect for it is remarkably agile for a beast of its size.

In Fukien we hunted serows on the summit of a high mountain clothed with a dense jungle of dwarf bamboo. It was in quite different country from that which the animals inhabit in Yuen-nan for although the cover was exceedingly thick it was without such high cliffs and there were extensive grassy meadows. We did not see any serows in Fukien because of the ignorance of our beaters, although the trails were cut by fresh tracks. The natives said that in late September the animals could often be found in the forests of the lower mountain slopes when they came to browse upon the new grown mushrooms.

Mr. Caldwell purchased for us in the market the skin of a splendid female serow and a short time later obtained a young male. The latter was seen swimming across the river just below the city wall and was caught alive by the natives. The female weighed three hundred and ten pounds and the male two hundred and ninety pounds.

Serows are rare in captivity and are said to be rather dangerous pets unless tamed when very young. We are reproducing a photograph taken and kindly loaned by Mr. Herbert Lang, of one formerly living in the Berlin Zooelogical Garden; we saw a serow in the Zooelogical Park at Calcutta and one from Darjeeling is owned by the London Zooelogical Society.

Gorals are pretty little animals of the size of the chamois. The species which we killed on the Snow Mountain can probably be referred to Naemorhedus griseus, but I have not yet had an opportunity to study our specimens carefully. Unlike the serows these gorals have blackish brown tails which from the roots to the end of the hairs measure about 10 inches in length. The horns of both sexes are prominently ridged for the basal half of their length and perfectly smooth distally. The male horns are strongly recurved and are thick and round at the base but narrow rapidly to the tips; the female horns are straighter and more slender. The longest horns in the series which we received measured six inches in length and three and three-quarters inches in circumference at the base. Like the serows, gorals are confined to Asia and are found in northern India, Burma, and China, and northwards through Korea and southern Manchuria.

We hunted gorals with dogs on the Snow Mountain for in this particular region they could be killed in no other way. There was so much cover, even at altitudes of from 12,000 to 15,000 feet and the rocks were so precipitous, that a man might spend a month "still hunting" and never see a goral. They are vicious fighters, and often back up to a cliff where they can keep the dogs at a distance. One of our best hounds while hunting alone, brought a goral to bay and was found dead next day by the hunters with its side ripped open.

On the Snow Mountain we found the animals singly but at Hui-yao, not far from the Burma frontier, where we hunted another species in the spring, they were almost universally in herds of from six to seven or eight. It was at the latter place that we had our best opportunity to observe gorals and learn something of their habits. We were camping on the banks of a branch of the Shwelie River, which had cut a narrow gorge for itself; on one side this was seven or eight hundred feet deep. A herd of about fifty gorals had been living for many years on one of the mountain sides not far from the village, and although they were seen constantly the natives had no weapons with which to kill them; but with our high-power rifles it was possible to shoot across the river at distances of from two hundred to four hundred yards.

We could scan every inch of the hillside through our field glasses and watch the gorals as they moved about quite unconscious of our presence. At this place they were feeding almost exclusively upon the leaves of low bushes and the new grass which had sprung up where the slopes had been partly burned over. We found them browsing from daylight until about nine o'clock, and from four in the afternoon until dark. They would move slowly among the bushes, picking off the new leaves, and usually about the middle of the morning would choose a place where the sun beat in warmly upon the rocks, and go to sleep.

Strangely enough they did not lie down on their sides, as do many hoofed animals, but doubled their forelegs under them, stretched their necks and hind legs straight out, and rested on their bellies. It was a most uncomfortable looking attitude, and the first time I saw an animal resting thus I thought it had been wounded, but both Mr. Heller and myself saw them repeatedly at other times, and realized that this was their natural position when asleep.

When frightened, like our own mountain sheep or goats, they would run a short distance and stop to look back. This was usually their undoing, for they offered excellent targets as they stood silhouetted against the sky. They were very difficult to see when lying down among the rocks, but our native hunters, who had most extraordinary eyesight, often would discover them when it was almost impossible for me to find them even with the field glasses. We never could be sure that there were no gorals on a mountainside, for they were adepts at hiding, and made use of a bunch of grass or the smallest crevice in a rock to conceal themselves, and did it so completely that they seemed to have vanished from the earth.

Like all sheep and goats, they could climb about where it seemed impossible for any animal to move. I have seen a goral run down the face of a cliff which appeared to be almost perpendicular, and where the dogs dared not venture. As the animal landed on a projecting rock it would bounce off as though made of rubber, and leap eight or ten feet to a narrow ledge which did not seem large enough to support a rabbit.

The ability to travel down such precipitous cliffs is largely due to the animal's foot structure. Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn has investigated this matter in the mountain goat and as his remarks apply almost equally well to the goral, I cannot do better than quote them here:

The horny part of the foot surrounds only the extreme front. Behind this crescentic horn is a shallow concavity which gives the horny hoof a chance to get its hold. Both the main digits and the dewclaws terminate in black, rubber-like, rounded and expanded soles, which are of great service in securing a firm footing on the shelving rocks and narrow ledges on which the animal travels with such ease. This sole, Smith states, softens in the spring of the year, when the snow is leaving the ground, a fresh layer of the integument taking its place. The rubber-like balls with which the dewclaws are provided are by no means useless; they project back below the horny part of the hoof, and Mr. Smith has actually observed the young captive goats supporting themselves solely on their dewclaws on the edge of a roof. It is probable that they are similarly used on the rocks and precipices, since on a very narrow ledge they would serve favorably to alter the center of gravity by enabling the limb to be extended somewhat farther forward. [Footnote: "Mountain Goat Hunting with the Camera," by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Reprinted from the tenth Annual Report of the New York Zooelogical Society, 1906, pp. 13-14.]

There were certain trails leading over the hill slopes at Hui-yao which the gorals must have used continually, judging by the way in which these were worn. We also found much sign beneath overhanging rocks and on projecting ledges to indicate that these were definite resorts for numbers of the animals. Many which we saw were young or of varying ages running with the herds, and it was interesting to see how perfectly they had mastered the art of self-concealment even when hardly a year old. Although at Hui-yao almost all were on the east side of the river, they did not seem to be especially averse to water, and several times I watched wounded animals swim across the stream.

Gorals are splendid game animals, for the plucky little brutes inspire the sportsman with admiration, besides leading him over peaks which try his nerve to the utmost, and I number among the happiest hours of my life the wonderful hunts in Yuen-nan, far above the clouds, at the edge of the snow.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE "WHITE WATER"

Y.B.A.

October had slipped into November when we left the temple and shifted camp to the other side of the Snow Mountain at the "White Water." It was a brilliant day and the ride up the valley could not have been more beautiful. Crossing the gangheisa or "dry sea," a great grassy plain which was evidently a dry lake basin, we followed the trail into the forest and down the side of a deep canon to a mountain stream where the waters spread themselves in a thin, green veil over a bed of white stones.

We pitched our tents on a broad terrace beside the stream at the edge of the spruce forest. Above us towered the highest peak of the mountain, with a glacier nestling in a basin near its summit, and the snow-covered slopes extending in a glorious shining crescent about our camp. The moon was full, and each night as we sat at dinner before the fire, the ragged peaks turned crimson in the afterglow of the sun, and changed to purest silver at the touch of the white moonlight. We have had many camps in many lands but none more beautiful than the one at the "White Water."

The weather was perfect. Every day the sun shone in a cloudless blue sky and in the morning the ground was frozen hard and covered with snowlike frost, but the air was marvelously stimulating. We felt that we could be happy at the "White Water" forever, but it did not prove to be as good a hunting ground as that on the other side of the mountain. The Lolos killed a fine serow on the first day and Hotenfa brought in a young goral a short time later, but big game was by no means abundant. At the "White Water" we obtained our first Lady Amherst's pheasant (Thaumalea amherstiae) one of the most remarkable species of a family containing the most beautiful birds of the world. The rainbow colored body and long tail of the male are made more conspicuous by a broad white and green ruff about the neck. The first birds brought alive to England were two males which had been presented to the Countess Amherst after whom the species was named. We found this pheasant inhabiting thick forests where it is by no means easy to discover or shoot. It is fairly abundant in Yuen-nan, Eastern Tibet and S'suchuan but its habits are not well known. Although the camp yielded several small mammals new to our collection, we decided to go into Li-chiang to engage a new caravan for our trip across the Yangtze River while Heller remained in camp.

The direct road to Li-chiang was considerably shorter than by way of the Snow Mountain village and at three o'clock in the afternoon our beloved "Temple of the Flowers" was visible on the hilltop overlooking the city. As we rode up the steep ascent we saw a picturesque gathering on the porch and heard the sound of many voices laughing and talking. The beautiful garden-like courtyard was filled with women and children of every age and description, and all the doors from one side of the temple had been removed, leaving a large open space where huge caldrons were boiling and steaming.

We sat down irresolutely on the inner porch but the young priest was delighted to see us and insisted that we wait until Wu arrived. We were glad that we did not seek other quarters for we were to witness an interesting ceremony, which is most characteristic of Chinese life. It seemed that about five years before a gentleman of Li-chiang had "shuffled off this mortal coil." His soul may have found rest, but "his mortal coil" certainly did not. Unfortunately his family inherited a few hundred dollars several years later and the village "astrologer" informed them that according to the feng-shui, or omnipotent spirits of the earth, wind, and water, the situation of the deceased gentleman's grave was ill-chosen and that if they ever hoped to enjoy good fortune again they must dig him up, give the customary feast in his honor and have another burial site chosen.

Every village has a "wise man" who is always called upon to select the resting place of the dead, his remuneration varying from two dollars to two thousand dollars according to the circumstances of the deceased's relatives. The astrologer never will say definitely whether or not the spot will prove a propitious one and if the family later sell any property, receive a legacy, or are known to have obtained money in other ways, the astrologer usually finds that the feng-shui do not favor the original place and he will exact another fee for choosing a second grave.

The dead are never buried until the astrologer has named an auspicious day as well as an appropriate site, with the result that unburied coffins are to be seen in temples, under roadside shelters, in the fields and in the back yards of many houses.

Any interference by foreigners with this custom is liable to bring about dire results as in the case of the rioting in Shanghai in 1898. A number of French residents objected to a temple near by being used to store a score or more of bodies until a convenient time for burial and the result was the death of many people in the fighting which ensued. Mr. Tyler Dennet cites an amusing anecdote regarding the successful handling of the problem by a native mandarin in Yen-ping where we visited Mr. Caldwell:

The doctor pointed out how dangerous to public health was the presence of these coffins in Yen-ping. The magistrate had a census taken of the coffins above ground in the city and found that they actually numbered sixteen thousand. The city itself is estimated to have only about twenty thousand inhabitants.

It was a difficult problem for the magistrate. He might easily move in such a way as to bring the whole city down about his head. But the Chinese are clever in such situations, perhaps the cleverest people on earth. He finally devised a way out. A proclamation was issued levying a tax of fifty cents on every unburied coffin. The Chinese may be superstitious, but they are even more thrifty. For a few weeks Yen-ping devoted itself to funerals, a thousand a week, and now this little city, one of the most isolated in China, can truly be said to be on the road to health. [Footnote: "Doctoring China," by Tyler Dennet, Asia, February, 1918, p. 114.]

There are very few such progressive cities in China, however, and a missionary told us that recently a young child and his grandfather were buried on the same day although their deaths had been nearly fifty years apart. The funeral rites are in themselves fairly simple, but it is the great ambition of every Chinese to have his resting place as near as possible to those of his ancestors. That is one of the reasons why they are so loath to emigrate.

We often passed eight or ten coolies staggering under the load of a heavy coffin, transporting a body sometimes a month's journey or more to bury it at the dead man's birthplace. A rooster usually would be fastened to the coffin for, according to the Yuen-nan superstition, the spirit of the man enters the bird and is conveyed by it to his home.

There is a strange absence of the fear of death among the Chinese. One often sees large planks of wood stored in a corner of a house and one is told that these are destined to become the coffins of the man's father or mother, even though his parents may at the time be enjoying the most robust health. Indeed, among the poorer classes, a coffin is considered a most fitting gift for a son to present to his father.

We established our camp on the porch of the temple at Li-chiang and from its vantage point could watch the festivities going on about us. The feasting continued until after dark and at daylight the kettles were again steaming to prepare for the second day's celebration.

By ten o'clock the court was crowded and a hour later there came a partial stillness which was broken by a sudden burst of music (?) from Chinese violins and pipes. Going outside we found most of the guests standing about an improvised altar. The foot of the coffin was just visible in the midst of the paper decorations and in front of it were set half a dozen dishes of tempting food. These were meant as an offering to the spirit of the departed one, but we knew this would not prevent the sorrowing relatives from eating the food with much relish later on.

In a few moments a group of women approached, supporting a figure clothed in white with a hood drawn over her face. She was bent nearly to the ground and muffled shrieks and wails came from the depths of her veil as she prostrated herself in front of the altar. For more than an hour this chief mourner, the wife of the deceased, lay on her face, her whole figure shaking with what seemed the most uncontrollable anguish. This same lady, however, moved about later among her guests an amiable hostess, with beaming countenance, the gayest of the gay. But every morning while the festivities lasted, promptly at eleven o'clock she would prostrate herself before the coffin and display heartrending grief in the presence of the unmoved spectators in order to satisfy the demands of "custom."

Custom and precedent have grown to be divinities with the Chinese, and such a display of feigned emotion is required on certain prescribed occasions. As one missionary aptly described it "the Chinese are all face and no heart." Mr. Caldwell told us that one night while passing down a deserted street in a Chinese village he was startled to hear the most piercing shrieks issuing from a house nearby. Thinking someone was being murdered, he rushed through the courtyard only to find that a girl who was to be married the following day, according to Chinese custom, was displaying the most desperate anguish at the prospect of leaving her family, even though she probably was enchanted with the idea.

On the third day of the celebration in the temple at Li-chiang the feasting ended in a burst of splendor. From one o'clock until far past sundown the friends and relatives of the departed one were fed. Any person could receive an invitation by bringing a small present, even if it were only a bowl of rice or a few hundred cash (ten or fifteen cents).

All during the morning girls and women flocked up the hill with trays of gifts. There were many Mosos and other tribesmen among them as well as Chinese. The Moso girls wore their black hair cut short on the sides and hanging in long narrow plaits down their backs. They wore white leather capes (at least that was the original shade) and pretty ornaments of silver and coral at their throats, and as they were young and gay with glowing red cheeks and laughing eyes they were decidedly attractive. The guests were seated in groups of six on the stones of the temple courtyard. Small boys acted as waiters, passing about steaming bowls of vegetables and huge straw platters heaped high with rice. As soon as each guest had stuffed himself to satisfaction he relinquished his place to someone else and the food was passed again. We were frequently pressed to eat with them and in the evening when the last guest had departed the "chief mourner" brought us some delicious fruit candied in black sugar. She told Wu that they had fed three hundred people during the day and we could well believe it. The next morning the coffin was carried down the hill to the accompaniment of anguished wails and we were left once more to the peace and quiet of our beautiful temple courtyard.

Sometimes a family will plunge itself into debt for generations to come to provide a suitable funeral for one of its members, because to bury the dead without the proper display would not only be to "lose face" but subject them to the possible persecution of the angered spirits. This is only one of the pernicious results of ancestor worship and it is safe to say that most of the evils in China's social order today can be traced, directly or indirectly, to this unfortunate practice.

A man's chief concern is to leave male descendants to worship at his grave and appease his spirit. The more sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons who walk in his funeral procession, the more he is to be envied. As a missionary humorously says "the only law of God that ever has been obeyed in China is to be fruitful and multiply." Craving for progeny has brought into existence thousands upon thousands of human beings who exist on the very brink of starvation. Nowhere in the civilized world is there a more sordid and desperate struggle to maintain life or a more hopeless poverty. But fear and self-love oblige them to continue their blind breeding. The apparent atrophy of the entire race is due to ancestor worship which binds it with chains of iron to its dead and to its past, and not until these bonds are severed can China expect to take her place among the progressive nations of the earth.



CHAPTER XIX

ACROSS THE YANGTZE GORGE

In mid-November we left the White Water with a caravan of twenty-six mules and horses. Following the road from Li-chiang to the Yangtze, we crossed the "Black Water" and climbed steadily upward over several tremendous wooded ridges, each higher than the last, to the summit of the divide.

The descent was gradual through a magnificent pine and spruce forest. Some of the trees were at least one hundred and fifty feet high, and were draped with beautiful gray moss which had looped itself from branch to branch and hung suspended in delicate streamers yards in length. The forest was choked with underbrush and a dense growth of dwarf bamboo, and the hundreds of fallen logs, carpeted with bronze moss, made ideal conditions for small mammal collecting. However, as all the species would probably be similar to those we had obtained on the Snow Mountain, we did not feel that it was worth while stopping to trap.

At four-thirty in the afternoon we camped upon a beautiful hill in a pine forest which was absolutely devoid of underbrush, and where the floor was thinly overlaid with brown pine needles. Although the Moso hunter, who acted as our guide, assured us that the river was only three miles away, it proved to be more than fifteen, and we did not reach the ferry until half past one the next afternoon.

We were continually annoyed, as every traveler in China is, by the inaccuracy of the natives, and especially of the Chinese. Their ideas of distance are most extraordinary. One may ask a Chinaman how far it is to a certain village and he will blandly reply, "Fifteen li to go, but thirty li when you come back." After a short experience one learns how to interpret such an answer, for it means that when going the road is down hill and that the return uphill will require double the time.

Caravans are supposed to travel ten li an hour, although they seldom do more than eight, and all calculations of distance are based upon time so far as the mafus are concerned. If the day's march is eight hours you invariably will be informed that the distance is eighty li, although in reality it may not be half as great.

In "Chinese Characteristics," Dr. Arthur H. Smith gives many illuminating observations on the inaccuracy of the Chinese. In regard to distance he says:

It is always necessary in land travel to ascertain, when the distance is given in "miles" (li), whether the "miles" are "large" or not! That there is some basis for estimates of distances we do not deny, but what we do deny is that these estimates or measurements are either accurate or uniform.

It is, so far as we know, a universal experience that the moment one leaves a great imperial highway the "miles" become "long." If 120 li constitute a fair day's journey on the main road, then on country roads it will take fully as long to go 100 li, and in the mountains the whole day will be spent in getting over 80 li (p. 51).

In like manner, a farmer who is asked the weight of one of his oxen gives a figure which seems much too low, until he explains that he has omitted to estimate the bones! A servant who was asked his height mentioned a measure which was ridiculously inadequate to cover his length, and upon being questioned admitted that he had left out of account all above his shoulders! He had once been a soldier, where the height of the men's clavicle is important in assigning the carrying of burdens. And since a Chinese soldier is to all practical purposes complete without his head, this was omitted.

Of a different sort was the measurement of a rustic who affirmed that he lived "ninety li from the city," but upon cross-examination he consented to an abatement, as this was reckoning both to the city and back, the real distance being as he admitted, only "forty-five li one way!" (p. 49) ...

The habit of reckoning by "tens" is deep-seated, and leads to much vagueness. A few people are "ten or twenty," a "few tens," or perhaps "ever so many tens," and a strictly accurate enumeration is one of the rarest of experiences in China.... An acquaintance told the writer that two men had spent "200 strings of cash" on a theatrical exhibition, adding a moment later, "It was 173 strings, but that is the same as 200—is it not?" (p. 54).

A man who wished advice in a lawsuit told the writer that he himself "lived" in a particular village, though it was obvious from his narrative that his abode was in the suburbs of a city. Upon inquiry, he admitted that he did not now live in the village, and further investigation revealed the fact that the removal took place nineteen generations ago! "But do you not almost consider yourself a resident of the city now?" he was asked. "Yes," he replied simply, "we do live there now, but the old root is in that village."

...The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on a line of assumptions different from those to which we are accustomed, and they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the Occidental to ascertain everything with unerring exactness. The Chinese does not know how many families there are in his native village, and he does not wish to know. What any human being can want to know this number for is to him an insoluble riddle. It is "a few hundred," "several hundreds," or "not a few," but a fixed and definite number it never was and never will be. (p. 55.)

After breaking camp on the day following our departure from the "White Water" we rode along a broad trail through a beautiful pine forest and in the late morning stood on an open summit gazing on one of the most impressive sights which China has to offer. At the left, and a thousand feet below, the mighty Yangtze has broken through the mountains in a gorge almost a mile deep; a gorge which seems to have been carved out of the solid rock, sharp and clean, with a giant's knife. A few miles to the right the mountains widen, leaving a flat plain two hundred feet above the river. Every inch of it, as well as the finger-like valleys which stretch upward between the hills, is under cultivation, giving support for three villages, the largest of which is Taku.

The ferry is in a bad place but it is the only spot for miles where the river can be crossed. The south bank is so precipitous that the trail from the plain twists and turns like a snake before it emerges upon a narrow sand and gravel beach. The opposite side of the river is a vertical wall of rock which slopes back a little at the lower end to form a steep hillside covered with short grass. The landing place is a mass of jagged rocks fronting a small patch of still water and the trail up the face of the cliff is so steep that it cannot be climbed by any loaded animal; therefore all the packs must be unstrapped and laboriously carted up the slope on the backs of the mafus.

At two-thirty in the afternoon we were loading the boat, which carried only two animals and their packs, for the first trip across the river. It was difficult to get the mules aboard for they had to be whipped, shoved and actually lifted bodily into the dory. One of the ferrymen first drew the craft along the rocks by a long rope, then climbed up the face of what appeared to be an absolutely flat wall, and after pulling the boat close beneath him, slid down into it. In this way the dory was worked well up stream and when pushed into the swift current was rowed diagonally to the other side.

After four loads had been taken over, the boatmen decided to stop work although there was yet more than an hour of daylight and they could not be persuaded to cross again by either threats or coaxing. It was an uncomfortable situation but there was nothing to do but camp where we were even though the greater part of our baggage was on the other side, with only the mafus to guard it, and therefore open to robbery.

About a third of a mile from the ferry we found a sandy cornfield on a level shelf just above the water, and pitched our tents. A slight wind was blowing and before long we had sand in our shoes, sand in our beds, sand in our clothes, and we were eating sand. Heller went down the river with a bag of traps while we set forty on the hills above camp, and after a supper of goral steak, which did much to allay the irritation of the day, we crawled into our sandy beds.

At daylight Hotenfa visited the ferry and reported that the loads were safe but that one of the boatmen had gone to the village and no one knew when he would return. We went to the river with Wu as soon as breakfast was over and spent an aggravating hour trying by alternate threats and cajoling to persuade the remaining ferryman to cross the river to us. But it was useless, for the louder I swore the more frightened he became and he finally retired into a rock cave from which the mafus had to drag him out bodily and drive him into the boat.

The second boatman ambled slowly in about ten o'clock and we felt like beating them both, but Wu impressed upon us the necessity for patience if we ever expected to get our caravan across and we swallowed our wrath; nevertheless, we decided not to leave until the loads and mules were on the other side, and we ate a cold tiffin while sitting on the sand.

Heller employed his time by skinning the twenty small mammals (one of which was a new rat) that our traps had yielded. We took a good many photographs and several rolls of "movie" film showing the efforts of the mafus to get the mules aboard. Some of them went in quietly enough but others absolutely refused to step into the boat. One of the mafus would pull, another push, a third twist the animal's tail and a fourth lift its feet singly over the side. With the accompaniment of yells, kicks, and Chinese oaths the performance was picturesque to say the least.

By five o'clock the entire caravan had been taken across the racing green water and we had some time before dark in which to investigate the caverns with which the cliffs above the river are honeycombed. They were of two kinds, gold quarries and dwelling caves. The latter consist of a long central shaft, just high enough to allow a man to stand erect; this widens into a circular room. Along the sides of the corridor shallow nests have been scooped out to serve as beds and all the cooking is done not far from the door. The caves, although almost dark, make fairly comfortable living quarters and are by no means as dirty or as evil smelling as the ordinary native house. The mines are straight shafts dug into the cliffs where the rock is quarried and crushed by hand.



CHAPTER XX

THROUGH UNMAPPED COUNTRY

We left the Taku ferry by way of a steep trail through an open pine and spruce forest along the rim of the Yangtze gorge where the view was magnificent. Someone has said that when a tourist sees the Grand Canon for the first time he gasps "Indescribable" and then immediately begins to describe it. Thus it was with us, but no words can picture the grandeur of this titanic chasm. In places the rocks were painted in delicate tints of blue and purple; in others, the sides fell away in sheer drops of hundreds of feet to the green torrent below rushing on to the sea two thousand five hundred miles away.