– i –

CAMPS AND TRAILS

IN CHINA

– ii –

Our Camp on the Snow Mountain
at an Altitude of 12,000 Feet

A NARRATIVE OF EXPLORATION, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT
IN LITTLE-KNOWN CHINA

ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS, M.A.

ASSOCIATE CURATOR OF MAMMALS IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND
LEADER OF THE MUSEUM’S ASIATIC ZOÖLOGICAL EXPEDITION OF 1916-1917;
FELLOW NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; CORRESPONDING MEMBER
ZOÖLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON; MEMBER OF THE BIOLOGICAL
SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON; AUTHOR “WHALEHUNTING
WITH GUN AND CAMERA”

AND

YVETTE BORUP ANDREWS

PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE ASIATIC ZOÖLOGICAL EXPEDITION

ILLUSTRATED

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK  LONDON
1918

– iv –

Copyright, 1918, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

– v –

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

PRESIDENT HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

AS AN EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE
AND ADMIRATION

– vii –

—Service.

– viii –

The object of this book is to present a popular narrative
of the Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition of the American Museum
of Natural History to China in 1916-17. Details of a purely
scientific nature have been condensed, or eliminated, and emphasis
has been placed upon our experiences with the strange
natives and animals of a remote and little known region in the
hope that the book will be interesting to the general reader.

The scientific reputation of the Expedition will rest upon
the technical reports of its work which will be published in due
course by the American Museum of Natural History. To
these reports we would refer those readers who desire more
complete information concerning the results of our researches.
At the time the manuscript of this volume was sent to press
the collections were still undergoing preparation and the study
of the different groups had just begun.

Although the book has been largely written by the senior
author, his collaborator has contributed six chapters marked
with her initials; all the illustrations are from her photographs
and continual use has been made of her daily journals; she has,
moreover, materially assisted in reference work and in numerous
other ways.

The information concerning the relationships and distribution
of the native tribes of Yün-nan is largely drawn from
the excellent reference work by Major H. R. Davies and we
have followed his spelling of Chinese names.

Parts of the book have been published as separate articles
in the American Museum Journal, Harper’s Magazine, and
Asia and to the editors of the above publications our acknowledgments
are due.

That the Expedition obtained a very large and representative
– x –
collection of small mammals is owing in a great measure
to the efforts of Mr. Edmund Heller, our companion in the
field. He worked tirelessly in the care and preservation of the
specimens, and the fact that they reached New York in excellent
condition is, in itself, the best testimony to the skill
and thoroughness with which they were prepared.

Our Chinese interpreter, Wu Hung-tao, contributed largely
to the success of the Expedition. His faithful and enthusiastic
devotion to our interests and his tact and resourcefulness
under trying circumstances won our lasting gratitude and affectionate
regard.

The nineteen months during which we were in Asia are among
the most memorable of our lives and we wish to express our
deepest gratitude to the Trustees of the American Museum of
Natural History, and especially to President Henry Fairfield
Osborn, whose enthusiastic endorsement and loyal support
made the Expedition possible. Director F. A. Lucas, Dr. J. A.
Allen and Mr. George H. Sherwood were unfailing in furthering
our interests, and to them we extend our hearty thanks.

To the following patrons, who by their generous contributions
materially assisted in the financing of the Expedition, we
wish to acknowledge our great personal indebtedness as well
as that of the Museum; Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Bernheimer,
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney M. Colgate, Messrs. George Bowdoin,
Lincoln Ellsworth, James B. Ford, Henry C. Frick, Childs
Frick, and Mrs. Adrian Hoffman Joline.

The Expedition received many courtesies while in the field
from the following gentlemen, without whose coöperation it
would have been impossible to have carried on the work successfully.
Their services have been referred to individually in
subsequent parts of the book: The Director of the Bureau of
Foreign Affairs of the Province of Yün-nan; M. Georges
Chemin Dupontès, Director de l’Exploration de la Compagnie
Française des Chemins de Fer de l’Indochine et du Yün-nan,
Hanoi, Tonking; M. Henry Wilden, Consul de France, Shanghai;
– xi –
M. Kraemer, Consul de France, Hongkong; Mr. Howard
Page, Standard Oil Co., Yün-nan Fu; the Hon. Paul Reinsch,
Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the
Chinese Republic, Mr. J. V. A. McMurray, First Secretary of
the American Legation, Peking; Mr. H. G. Evans, British-American
Tobacco Co., Hongkong; the Rev. William Hanna,
Ta-li Fu; the Rev. A. Kok, Li-chiang Fu; Ralph Grierson,
Esq., Teng-yueh; Herbert Goffe, Esq., H. B. M. Consul General,
Yün-nan Fu; Messrs. C. R. Kellogg, and H. W. Livingstone,
Foochow, China; the General Passenger Agent, Canadian
Pacific Railroad Company, Hongkong; and the Rev. H. R.
Caldwell, Yen-ping, who has read parts of this book in manuscript
and who through his criticisms has afforded us the
benefit of his long experience in China.

To Miss Agnes F. Molloy and Miss Anna Katherine Berger
we wish to express our appreciation of editorial and other assistance
during the preparation of the volume.

Roy Chapman Andrews
Yvette Borup Andrews

Justamere Home,
    Lawrence Park,
      Bronxville, N. Y.
May 10, 1917.

– xiii –

CHAPTER I

The Object of the Expedition

PAGE

1-6

CHAPTER II

China in Turmoil

7-14

CHAPTER III

Up the Min River

Y. B. A.

15-25

CHAPTER IV

A Bat Cave in the Big Ravine

26-81

– xiv –

CHAPTER V

The Yen-ping Rebellion

82-48

CHAPTER VI

Hunting the Great Invisible

44-58

CHAPTER VII

The Blue Tiger

54-66

CHAPTER VIII

The Women of China

Y. B. A.

67-73

– xv –

CHAPTER IX

Voyaging to Yün-nan

74-83

CHAPTER X

On the Road to Ta-li Fu

84-98

CHAPTER XI

Ta-li Fu

99-106

CHAPTER XII

Li-chiang, and the “Temple of the Flowers”

107-113

– xvi –

CHAPTER XIII

Camping in the Clouds

114-119

CHAPTER XIV

The First Goral

120-125

CHAPTER XV

More Gorals

126-188

CHAPTER XVI

The Snow Mountain Temple

184-189

CHAPTER XVII

Gorals and Serows

140-148

– xvii –

CHAPTER XVIII

The “White Water”

Y. B. A.

140-156

CHAPTER XIX

Across the Yangtze Gorge

157-163

CHAPTER XX

Through Unmapped Country

164-171

CHAPTER XXI

Traveling Toward Tibet

172-177

CHAPTER XXII

Stalking Tibetans with a Camera

Y. B. A.

178-181

– xviii –

CHAPTER XXIII

Westward to the Mekong River

182-189

CHAPTER XXIV

Down the Mekong Valley

190-201

CHAPTER XXV

Missionaries We Have Known

202-211

CHAPTER XXVI

Chinese New Year at Yung-chang

Y. B. A.

212-222

– xix –

CHAPTER XXVII

Traveling Toward the Tropics

223-232

CHAPTER XXVIII

Meng-ting: a Village of Many Tongues

233-343

CHAPTER XXIX

Camping on the Nam-ting River

244-251

CHAPTER XXX

Monkey Hunting

252-259

CHAPTER XXXI

The Shans of the Burma Border

260-263

– xx –

CHAPTER XXXII

Prisoners of War in Burma

Y. B. A.

264-272

CHAPTER XXXIII

Hunting Peacocks on the Salween River

273-280

CHAPTER XXXIV

The Gibbons of Ho-mu-shu

281-290

CHAPTER XXXV

Teng-yueh: a Link with Civilization

291-297

CHAPTER XXXVI

A Big Game Paradise

298-304

– xxi –

CHAPTER XXXVII

Serow and Sambur

305-314

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Last Days in China

315-322

– 1 –

THE OBJECT OF THE EXPEDITION

The earliest remains of primitive man probably will
be found somewhere in the vast plateau of Central
Asia, north of the Himalaya Mountains. From this
region came the successive invasions that poured into
Europe from the east, to India from the north, and to
China from the west; the migration route to North
America led over the Bering Strait and spread fanwise
south and southeast to the farthest extremity of South
America. The Central Asian plateau at the beginning
of the Pleistocene was probably less arid than it is today
and there is reason to believe that this general region
was not only the distributing center of man but also of
many of the forms of mammalian life which are now
living in other parts of the world. For instance, our
American moose, the wapiti or elk. Rocky Mountain
sheep, the so-called mountain goat, and other animals
are probably of Central Asian origin.

Doubtless there were many contributing causes to
the extensive wanderings of primitive tribes, but as
they were primarily hunters, one of the most important
– 2 –
must have been the movements of the game upon which
they lived. Therefore the study of the early human
races is, necessarily, closely connected with, and dependent
upon, a knowledge of the Central Asian mammalian
life and its distribution. No systematic palæontological,
archæological, or zoölogical study of this region on
a large scale has ever been attempted, and there is no
similar area of the inhabited surface of the earth about
which so little is known.

The American Museum of Natural History hopes in
the near future to conduct extensive explorations in
this part of the world along general scientific lines.
The country itself and its inhabitants, however, present
unusual obstacles to scientific research. Not only is the
region one of vast intersecting mountain ranges, the
greatest of the earth, but the climate is too cold in winter
to permit of continuous work. The people have a
natural dislike for foreigners, and the political events
of the last half century have not tended to decrease
their suspicions.

It is possible to overcome such difficulties, but the
plans for extensive research must be carefully prepared.
One of the most important steps is the sending
out of preliminary expeditions to gain a general knowledge
of the natives and fauna and of the conditions to
be encountered. For the first reconnaissance, which was
intended to be largely a mammalian survey, the Asiatic
Zoölogical Expedition left New York in March, 1916.

Its destination was Yün-nan, a province in southwestern
China. This is one of the least known parts
of the Chinese Republic and, because of its southern
latitude and high mountain systems, the climate and
faunal range is very great. It is about equal in size to
– 3 –
the state of California and topographically might be
likened to the ocean in a furious gale, for the greater
part of its surface has been thrown into vast mountain
waves which divide and cross one another in hopeless
confusion.

Yün-nan is bordered on the north by Tibet and
S’suchuan, on the west by Burma, on the south by Tonking,
and on the east by Kwei-chau Province. Faunistically
the entire northwestern part of Yün-nan is essentially
Tibetan, and the plateaus and mountain peaks
range from altitudes of 8,000 feet to 20,000 feet above
sea level. In the south and west along the borders of
Burma and Tonking, in the low fever-stricken valleys,
the climate is that of the mid-tropics, and the native
life, as well as the fauna and flora, is of a totally different
type from that found in the north.

The natives of Yün-nan are exceptionally interesting.
There are about thirty non-Chinese tribes in the
province, some of whom, such as the Shans and Lolos,
represent the aboriginal inhabitants of China, and it is
safe to say that in no similar area of the world is there
such a variety of language and dialects as in this region.

Although the main work of the Expedition was to be
conducted in Yün-nan, we decided to spend a short time
in Fukien Province, China, and endeavor to obtain a
specimen of the so-called “blue tiger” which has been
seen twice by the Reverend Harry R. Caldwell, a missionary
and amateur naturalist, who has done much
hunting in the vicinity of Foochow.

The white members of the first Asiatic Zoölogical
Expedition included Mr. Edmund Heller, my wife
(Yvette Borup Andrews) and myself. A Chinese
– 4 –
interpreter, Wu Hung-tao, with five native assistants and
ten muleteers, completed the personnel.

Mr. Heller is a collector of wide experience. His
early work, which was done in the western United States
and the Galapagos Islands, was followed by many years
of collecting in Mexico, Alaska, South America, and
Africa. He first visited British East Africa with Mr.
Carl E. Akeley, next with ex-President Theodore
Roosevelt, and again with Mr. Paul J. Rainey. During
the Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition Mr. Heller devoted
most of his time to the gathering and preparation
of small mammals. He joined our party late in July
in China.

Mrs. Andrews was the photographer of the Expedition.
She had studied photography as an amateur in
Germany, France, and Italy, as well as in New York,
and had devoted especial attention to the taking of
photographs in natural colors. Such work requires
infinite care and patience, but the results are well worth
the efforts expended.

Wu Hung-tao is a native of Foochow, China, and
studied English at the Anglo-Chinese College in that
city. He lived for some time in Teng-yueh, Yün-nan,
in the employ of Mr. F. W. Carey, Commissioner of
Customs, and not only speaks mandarin Chinese but
also several native dialects. He acted as interpreter,
head “boy,” and general field manager. My own work
was devoted mainly to the direction of the Expedition
and the hunting of big game.

Yvette Borup Andrews with a Pet Yün-nan Squirrel	Edmund Heller
Roy Chapman Andrews and a Goral

– 5 –

In order to reduce the heavy transportation charges
we purchased only such equipment in New York as
could not be obtained in Shanghai or Hongkong.
Messrs. Shoverling, Daly & Gales furnished our guns,
ammunition, tents, and general camp equipment, and
gave excellent satisfaction in attention to the minor details
which often assume alarming importance when an
expedition is in the field and defects cannot be remedied.
All food and commissary supplies were purchased in
Hongkong (see Chapter IX).

When the announcement of the Expedition was made
by the American Museum of Natural History it received
wide publicity in America and other parts of the
world. Immediately we began to discover how many
strange persons make up the great cities of the United
States, and we received letters and telegrams from hundreds
of people who wished to take part in the Expedition.
Men and boys were the principal applicants, but
there was no lack of women, many of whom came to the
Museum for personal interviews.

Most of the letters were laughable in the extreme.
One was from a butcher who thought he might be of
great assistance in preparing our specimens, or defending
us from savage natives; another young man offered
himself to my wife as a personal bodyguard; a third
was sure his twenty years’ experience as a waiter would
fit him for an important position on the Expedition,
and numerous women, young and old, wished to become
“companions” for my wife in those “drear wastes.”

Applicants continued to besiege us wherever we
stopped on our way across the continent and in San
Francisco until we embarked on the afternoon of Mardi
28 on the S. S. Tenyo Maru for Japan.

Our way across the Pacific was uneventful and as
the great vessel drew in toward the wharf in Yokohama
she was boarded by the usual crowd of natives. We
– 6 –
were standing at the rail when three Japanese approached
and, bowing in unison, said, “We are report
for leading Japanese newspaper. We wish to know
all thing about Chinese animal.” Evidently the speech
had been rehearsed, for with it their English ended
abruptly, and the interview proceeded rather lamely,
on my part, in Japanese.

Japan was reveling in the cherry blossom season when
we arrived and for a person interested in color photography
it was a veritable paradise. We stayed three
weeks and regretfully left for Peking by way of Korea.
But before we continue with the story of our further
travels, we would like briefly to review the political
situation in China as a background for our early work
in the province of Fukien.

CHINA IN TURMOIL

During the time the Expedition was preparing to
leave New York, China was in turmoil. Yuan Shi-kai
was president of the Republic, but the hope of his heart
was to be emperor of China. For twenty years he had
plotted for the throne; he had been emperor for one
hundred miserable days; and now he was watching,
impotently, his dream-castles crumble beneath his feet.
Yuan was the strong man of his day, with more power,
brains, and personality than any Chinese since Li-Hung
Chang. He always had been a factor in his political
world. His monarchical dream first took definite form
as early as 1901 when he became viceroy of Chi-li, the
province in which Peking is situated.

It was then that he began to modernize and get control
of the army which is the great basis of political
power in China. Properly speaking, there was not, and
is not now, a Chinese national army. It is rather a collection
of armies, each giving loyalty to a certain general,
and he who secures the support of the various commanders
controls the destiny of China’s four hundred
millions of people regardless of his official title.

Yuan was able to bind to himself the majority of
the leading generals, and in 1911, when the Manchu
dynasty was overthrown, his plots and intrigues began
to bear fruit. By crafty juggling of the rebels and
Manchus he managed to get himself elected president
– 8 –
of the new republic, although he did not for a moment
believe in the republican form of government. He was
always a monarchist at heart but was perfectly willing
to declare himself an ardent republican so long as such
a declaration could be used as a stepping stone to the
throne which he kept ever as his ultimate goal.

As president he ruled with a high hand. In 1918
there was a rebellion in protest against his official acts
but he defeated the rebels, won over more of the older
generals, and solidified the army for his own interests,
making himself stronger than ever before.

At this time he might well have made a coup d’état
and proclaimed himself emperor with hardly a shadow
of resistance, but with the hereditary caution of the
Chinese he preferred to wait and plot and scheme. He
wanted his position to be even more secure and to have
it appear that he reluctantly accepted the throne as a
patriotic duty at the insistent call of the people.

Yuan’s ways for producing the proper public sentiment
were typically Chinese but entirely effective, and
he was making splendid progress, when in May, 1915,
Japan put a spoke in his wheel of fortune by taking advantage
of the European war and presenting the historical
twenty-one demands, to most of which China
agreed.

This delayed his plans only temporarily, and Yuan’s
agents pushed the work of making him emperor more
actively than ever, with the result that the throne was
tendered to him by the “unanimous vote of the people.”
To “save his face” he declined at first but at the second
offer he “reluctantly” yielded and on December 12,
1916, became emperor of China.

But his triumph was short-lived, for eight days later
– 9 –
tidings of unrest in Yün-nan reached Peking. General
Tsai-ao, a former military governor of the province, appeared
in Yün-nan Fu, the capital, and, on December
28, sent an ultimatum to Yuan stating that he must
repudiate the monarchy and execute all those who had
assisted him to gain the throne, otherwise Yün-nan
would secede; which it forthwith did on December 25.

Without doubt this rebellion was financed by the Japanese
who had intimated to Yuan that the change from
a republican form of government would not meet with
their approval The rebellion spread rapidly. On January
21, Kwei-chau Province, which adjoins Yün-nan,
seceded, and, on March 18, Kwang-si also announced its
independence.

About this time the Museum authorities were becoming
somewhat doubtful as to the advisability of proceeding
with our Expedition. We had a long talk with
Dr. Wellington Koo, the Chinese Minister to the United
States, at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. Dr. Koo,
while certain that the rebellion would be short-lived,
strongly advised us to postpone our expedition until
conditions became more settled. He offered to cable
Peking for advice, but we, knowing how unwelcome
to the government of the harassed Yuan would be a
party of foreigners who wished to travel in the disturbed
area, gratefully declined and determined to proceed
regardless of conditions. We hoped that Yuan
would be strong enough to crush this rebellion as he
had that of 1918, but day by day, as we anxiously
watched the papers, there came reports of other provinces
dropping away from his standard.

On the Tenyo Maru we met the Honorable Charles
Denby, an ex-American Consul-General at Shanghai
– 10 –
and former adviser to Yuan Shi-kai when he was viceroy
of Chi-li. Mr. Denby was interested in obtaining
a road concession near Peking and was then on his
way to see Yuan. His anxiety over the political situation
was not less than ours and together we often paced
the decks discussing what might happen; but every wireless
report told of more desertions to the ranks of the
rebels.

It seemed to be the beginning of the end, for Yuan
had lost his nerve. He had decided to quit, and one
hundred days after he became emperor elect he issued
a mandate canceling the monarchy and restoring the
republic. But the rebellious provinces were not satisfied
and demanded that he get out altogether.

About this time we reached Peking, literally blown
in by a tremendous dust storm which seemed an elemental
manifestation of the human turmoil within the
grim old walls. Our cousin, Commander Thomas Hutchins,
Naval Attaché of the American Legation, was
awaiting us on the platform, holding his hat with one
hand and wiping the dust from his eyes with the other.

The news we received from him was by no means
comforting for in the Legation pessimism reigned supreme.
The American Minister, Dr. Reinsch, was not
enthusiastic about our going south regardless of conditions,
but nevertheless he set about helping us to obtain
the necessary visé for our passports.

We wished first to go to Foochow, in Fukien Province,
where we were to hunt tiger until Mr. Heller
joined us in July for the expedition into Yün-nan.
Fukien was still loyal to Yuan, but the strong Japanese
influence in this province, which is directly opposite the
– 11 –
island of Formosa, was causing considerable uneasiness
in Peking.

We were armed with telegrams from Mr. C. R.
Kellogg, of the Anglo-Chinese College, with whom we
were to stay while in Foochow, assuring us that all was
quiet in the province, and through the influence of Dr.
Reinsch, the Chinese Foreign Office viséd our passports.
The huge red stamp which was affixed to them
was an amusing example of Chinese “face saving.”
First came the seal of Yuan’s impotent dynasty of Hung-Hsien,
signifying “Brilliant Prosperity,” and directly
upon it was placed the stamp of the Chinese Republic.
One was almost as legible as the other and thus the
Foreign Office saved its face in whichever direction the
shifting cards of political destiny should fall.

At a luncheon given by Dr. Reinsch at the Embassy
in Peking, we met Admiral von Hintze, the German
Minister, who had recently completed an adventurous
trip from Germany to China. He was Minister to
Mexico at the beginning of the war but had returned
to Berlin incognito through England to ask the Kaiser
for active sea service. The Emperor was greatly elated
over von Hintze’s performance and offered him the
appointment of Minister to China if he could reach
Peking in the same way that he had traveled to Berlin.
Von Hintze therefore shipped as supercargo on a Scandinavian
tramp steamer and arrived safely at Shanghai,
where he assumed all the pomp of a foreign diplomat
and proceeded to the capital.

The Americans were in a rather difficult position at
this time because of the international complications,
and social intercourse was extremely limited. Dinner
guests had to be chosen with the greatest care and one
– 12 –
was very likely to meet exactly the same people wherever
one went.

Peking is a place never to be forgotten by one who
has shared its social life. In the midst of one of the
most picturesque, most historical, and most romantic
cities of the world there is a cosmopolitan community
that enjoys itself to the utmost. Its talk is all of horses,
polo, racing, shooting, dinners, and dances, with the
interesting background of Chinese politics, in which
things are never dull. There is always a rebellion of
some kind to furnish delightful thrills, and one never
can tell when a new political bomb will be projected
from the mysterious gates of the Forbidden City.

We spent a week in Peking and regretfully left by
rail for Shanghai. En route we passed through Tsinan-fu
where the previous night serious fighting had occurred
in which Japanese soldiers had joined with the
rebels against Yuan’s troops. On every side there was
evidence of Japan’s efforts against him. In the foreign
quarter of Shanghai just behind the residence of Mr.
Sammons, the American Consul-General, one of Yuan’s
leading officers had been openly murdered, and Japanese
were directly concerned in the plot. We were told
that it was very difficult at that time to lease houses in
the foreign concession because wealthy Chinese who
feared the wrath of one party or the other were eager
to pay almost any rent to obtain the protection of that
quarter of the city.

A short time later it became known to a few that
Yuan was seriously ill. He was suffering from Bright’s
disease with its consequent weakness, loss of mental
alertness, and lack of concentration. French doctors
were called in, but Yuan’s wives insisted upon treating
– 13 –
him with concoctions of their own, and on June 6, shortly
after three o’clock in the morning, he died.

Even on his death-bed Yuan endeavored to save his
face before the country, and his last words were a reiteration
of what he knew no one believed. The story of
his death is told in the China Press of June 7, 1916:

So ended Yuan Shi-kai’s great plot to make himself
an emperor over four hundred millions of people, a
plot which could only have been carried out in China.
He failed, and the once valiant warrior died in the humiliation
of defeat, leaving thirty-two wives, forty children
and his country in political chaos.

UP THE MIN RIVER

Y. B. A.

Three days after leaving Shanghai we arrived at
Pagoda Anchorage at the mouth of the Min River,
twelve miles from Foochow.

We boarded a launch which threaded its way through
a fleet of picturesque fishing vessels, each one of which
had a round black and white eye painted on its crescent-shaped
bow. When asked the reason for this decoration
a Chinese on the launch looked at us rather pityingly
for a moment and then said: “No have eye. No
can see.” How simple and how entirely satisfactory!

The instant the launch touched the shore dozens of
coolies swarmed like flies over it, fighting madly for
our luggage. One seized a trunk, the other end of
which had been appropriated by another man and, in
the argument which ensued, each endeavored to deafen
the other by his screams. The habit of yelling to enforce
command is inherent with the Chinese and appears to
be ineradicable. To expostulate in an ordinary tone
of voice, pausing to listen to his opponent’s reply, seems
a psychological impossibility.

There had been a mistake about the date of our arrival
at Foochow, and we were two days earlier than
we had been expected, so that Mr. C. R. Kellogg, of
the Anglo-Chinese College, with whom we were to
– 16 –
stay, was not on the jetty to meet us. We were at a
loss to know where to turn amidst the chaos and confusion
until a customs officer took us in charge and,
judiciously selecting a competent looking woman from
among the screaming multitude, told her to get two
sedan chairs and coolies to carry our luggage. She disappeared
and ten minutes later the chairs arrived. Dashing
about among the crowd in front of us, she chose
the baggage for such men as met with her approval
and after the usual amount of argument the loads were
taken.

We mounted our chairs and started off with apparently
all Foochow following us. As far as we could see
down the narrow street were the heads and shoulders of
our porters. We felt as if we were heading an invading
army as, with our thirty-three coolies and sixteen hundred
pounds of luggage, we descended upon the homes
of people whom we did not know and who were not
expecting us. But our sudden arrival did not disturb
the Kelloggs and our welcome was typical of the warm
hospitality one always finds in the Far East.

No matter how long one has lived in China one remains
in a condition of mental suspense unable to decide
which is the filthiest city of the Republic. The
residents of Foochow boast that for offensiveness to
the senses no town can compare with theirs, and although
Amoy and several other places dispute this questionable
title, we were inclined to grant it unreservedly
to Foochow. It is like a medieval city with its narrow,
ill-paved streets wandering aimlessly in a hopeless maze.
They are usually roofed over so that by no accident
can a ray of purifying sun penetrate their dark comers.
With no ventilation whatsoever the oppressive air reeks
– 17 –
with the odors that rise from the streets and the steaming
houses.

In Foochow, as in other cities of China, the narrow
alleys are literally choked with every form of industrial
obstruction. Countless workmen plant themselves in the
tiny passageways with the pigs, children, and dogs, and
women bring their quilts to spread upon the stones.
There is a common saying that the Chinese do little
which is not at some time done on the street.

The foreign residents, including consuls of all nationalities,
missionaries, and merchants, live well out of
the city on a hilltop. Their houses are built with very
high ceilings and bare interiors, and as the occupants
seldom go into the city except in a sedan chair and have
“punkahs” waving day and night, life is made possible
during the intense heat of summer.

A telegram was awaiting us from the Reverend Harry
Caldwell, with whom we were to hunt, asking us to
come to his station two hundred miles up the river, and
we passed two sweltering days repacking our outfit
while Mr. Kellogg scoured the country for an English-speaking
cook.

One middle-aged gentleman presented himself, but
when he learned that we were going “up country,” he
shook his head with an assumption of great filial devotion
and said that he did not think his mother would
let him go. Another was afraid the sun might be too
hot. Finally on the eve of our departure we engaged
a stuttering Chinese who assured us that he was a remarkable
cook and exceptionally honest

If you have never heard a Chinaman stutter you
have something to live for, and although we discovered
that our cook was a shameless rascal he was worth all
– 18 –
he extracted in “squeeze,” for whenever he attempted
to utter a word we became almost hysterical. He sounded
exactly like a worn-out phonograph record buzzing
on a single note, and when he finally did manage to
articulate, his “pidgin” English in itself was screamingly
funny.

One day he came to the sampan proudly displaying a
piece of beef and, after a series of vocal gymnastics,
eventually succeeded in shouting: “Missie, this meat
no belong die-cow. Die-cow not so handsome.” Which
meant that this particular piece of beef was not from
an animal which had died from disease.

The first stage of our trip began before daylight.
We rode in four-man sedan chairs, followed by a long
procession of heavily laden coolies with our cameras,
duffle-sacks, and pack baskets. The road lay through
green rice fields between terraced mountains, and we
jogged along first on the crest of a hill, then in the
valley, passing dilapidated temples with the paint flaking
off and picturesque little huts half hidden in the
reeds of the winding river. It was a relief to get into
the country again after passing down the narrow village
streets and to breathe fresh air perfumed with
honeysuckle.

A passenger launch makes the trip to Cui-kau at the
beginning of the rapids, but it leaves at two o’clock in
the morning and is literally crowded to overflowing
with evil-smelling Chinese who sprawl over every available
inch of deck space, so that even the missionaries
strongly advised us against taking it. The passengers
not infrequently are pushed off into the water. One
of the missionaries witnessed an incident which illustrates
– 19 –
in a typical way the total lack of sympathy of the
average Chinese.

A coolie on the Cui-kau launch accidentally fell overboard,
and although a friend was able to grasp his hand
and hold him above the surface, no one offered to help
him; the launch continued at full speed, and finally
weakening, the poor man loosed his hold and sank. This
is by no means an isolated case. Some years ago a
foreign steamer was burned on the Yangtze River, and
the crowds of watching Chinese did little or nothing
to rescue the passengers and crew. Indeed, as fast as
they made their way to shore many of them were robbed
even of their clothing and some were murdered outright.

Our first day on the Min River was the most luxurious
of the entire Expedition, for we were fortunate
in obtaining the Standard Oil Company’s launch
through the kindness of Mr. Livingstone, their agent.
It was large and roomy, and the trip, which would
have been worse than disagreeable on the public boat,
was most delightful. The Min is one of the most beautiful
rivers of all China with its velvet green mountains
rising a thousand feet or more straight up from the
water and often terraced to the summits.

Perched on the bow of our boat was a wizened little
gentleman with a pigtail wrapped around his head, who
said he was a pilot, but as he inquired the channel of
everyone who passed and ran us aground a dozen times
or more to the tremendous agitation of our captain,
we felt that his claim was not entirely justified.

The river life was a fascinating, ever-changing picture.
One moment we would pass a sampan so loaded
with branches that it seemed like a small island floating
– 20 –
down the stream. Next a huge junk with bamboo-ribbed
sails projecting at impossible angles drifted by,
followed by innumerable smaller crafts, the monotonous
chant of the boatmen coming faintly over the water to
us as they passed.

When evening came we had reached Cui-kau. The
sampans in which we were to spend eight days were
drawn up on the beach with twenty or thirty others.
Right above us was the straggling town looking very
much like the rear view of tenement houses at home.
Darkness blotted out the filth of our surroundings but
could do nothing to lessen the odors that poured down
from the village, and we ate our dinner with little relish.

Our beds were spread in the sampans which we shared
in common with the four river men who formed the
crew. There was only a mosquito net to screen the
end of the boat, but all our surroundings were so strange
that this was but a minor detail. As we lay in our cots
we could look up at the stars framed in the half oval
of the sampan’s roof and listen to the sounds of the
water life grow fainter and fainter as one by one the
river men beached their boats for the night. It seemed
only a few minutes later when we were roused by a
rush of water, but it was daylight, and the boats had
reached the first of the rapids which separated us from
Yen-ping, one hundred and twenty miles away.

In the late afternoon we arrived at Chang-hu-fan
where Mr. Caldwell stood on the shore waving his hat
to us amidst scores of dirty little children and the explosion
of countless firecrackers. Wherever we went
crackers preceded and followed us—for when a Chinese
wishes to register extreme emotion, either of joy or sorrow,
– 21 –
its expression always takes the form of firecrackers.

There had been a good deal of persecution of the
native Christians in the district, and only recently a band
of soldiers had strung up the native pastor by the
thumbs and beaten him senseless. He was our host that
night and seemed to be a bright, vivacious, little man
but quite deaf as a result of his cruel treatment. He
never recovered and died a few weeks later. Mr. Caldwell
had come to investigate the affair, for the missionaries
are invested by the people themselves with a good
deal of authority.

We spent that night in the parish house just behind
the little church, a bare schoolroom being turned over
to us for our use, and it seemed very luxurious after we
had set up our cots, tables, chairs, and bath tub; but the
house was in the center of the town and the high walls
shut out every breath of pure air. The barred windows
opened on a street hardly six feet wide, and while we
were preparing for bed there was a buzz of subdued
whispers outside. We switched on a powerful electric
flashlight and there stood at least forty men, women
and children gazing at us with rapt attention, but they
melted away before the blinding glare like snow in a
June sun.

That night was not a pleasant one. The heat was
intense, the mosquitoes worse, and every dog and cat
in the village seemed to choose our court yard as a
dueling ground in which to settle old scores. The climax
was reached at four o’clock in the morning, when
directly under our windows there came a series of ear-splitting
squeals followed by a horrible gurgle. The
neighbors had chosen that particular spot and how to
– 22 –
kill the family pig, and the entire process which followed
of sousing it in hot water and scraping off the hair was
accompanied by unceasing chatter. Boiling with
rage we dressed and went for a walk, vowing not to
spend another night in the place but to sleep in the
sampans.

On the whole our river men were nice fellows but
they had the love of companionship characteristic of
all Chinese and the inherent desire to huddle together
as closely as possible wherever they were. On the way
up the river to Yuchi every evening they insisted on
stopping at some foul-smelling village, and it was difficult
to induce them to spend the night away from a town.
Moreover, at our stops for luncheon they would invariably
ignore a shady spot and choose a sand bank where
the sun beat down like a blast furnace.

The Chinese never appear to be affected by the sun
and go bareheaded at all seasons of the year, shading
their eyes with one hand or a partly opened fan. A
fan is the prime requisite, and it is not uncommon to
see coolies almost devoid of clothing, dragging a heavy
load and with the perspiration streaming from their
naked bodies, energetically fanning themselves meanwhile.

Mr. Caldwell was en route to Yuchi, one of his mission
stations far up a branch of the Min River, and as
there was a vague report of tiger in that vicinity we
joined him instead of proceeding directly to Yen-ping.
The tiger story was found to be merely a myth, but
our trip was made interesting by meeting Miss Mabel
Hartford, the only foreign resident of the place. She
has lived in Yuchi for two years and at one time did
not see a white person for eight months with the
– 23 –
exception of Mr. Caldwell who was in the vicinity for
three days. It requires four weeks to obtain supplies
from Foochow, there is no telegraph, and mails are
very irregular, but she enjoys the isolation and is passionately
fond of her work.

She has had an interesting life and one not devoid
of danger. In 1895 she was wounded and barely escaped
death in the Hwa Shan (Flower Mountain) massacre
in which ten women and one man were brutally murdered
by a mob of fanatic natives known as “Vegetarians.”
The Chinese Government was required to pay
a considerable indemnity to Miss Hartford, which she
accepted only under protest and characteristically devoted
to missionary work in Kucheng where the massacre
occurred.

Conditions at Yuchi when we arrived were most unsettled
and for some months there had been a veritable
“reign of terror.” A large band of brigands was established
in the hills not far from the city, and we were
warned by the mandarin not to attempt to go farther
up the river. A few months earlier several companies
of soldiers had been sent from Foochow, and the result
of turning loose these ruffians upon the town was to
make “the remedy worse than the disease.”

The soldiers were continually arresting innocent peasants,
accusing them of being brigands or aiding the
bandits, and shooting them without a hearing. At one
time accurate information concerning the camp of the
robbers was received and the soldiers set bravely off,
but when within a short distance of the brigands the
commanders began to quarrel among themselves, guns
were fired, and the bandits escaped. A Chinaman must
always “save his face,” however, and when they returned
– 24 –
to Yuchi they arrested dozens of people on mere suspicion
and executed them without the vestige of a trial.
Finally conditions became so intolerable that no one
was safe, and after repeated complaints by the missionaries,
a new mandarin of a somewhat better type was
sent to Yuchi.

As it was impossible to do any collecting farther up
the river because of the bandits, we left for Yen-ping
two days after arriving at Yuchi. Yen-ping is a wonderfully
picturesque old city, situated on a hill at a fork
of the river and surrounded by high stone walls pierced
and loopholed for rifle fire. Such walls, while of little
use against artillery, nevertheless offer a formidable
obstacle to anything less than field guns as we ourselves
were destined to discover.

The Methodist mission compound encloses a considerable
area on the very summit of the hill, backed by
the city wall, and besides the four dwelling houses, comprises
two large schools for boys and girls. Mr. Caldwell’s
residence commands a wonderful view down the
river and in the late afternoon sunlight when the hills
are bathed in pink and lavender and purple a more
beautiful spot can hardly be imagined.

But the delights of Yen-ping are somewhat tempered
by the abominable weather. In summer the heat is almost
unbearable and the air is so nearly saturated from
continual rain that it is impossible to dry anything except
over a fire. From all reports winter must be almost
as bad in the opposite extreme for the cold is damp
and penetrating; but the early fall is said to be delightful.

The larger part of Fukien, like many other provinces
in China, has been denuded of forests, and the groves
– 25 –
of pine which remain have all been planted. This deforestation
consequently has driven out the game, and
except for tigers, leopards, wolves, wild pigs, serows and
gorals, none of the large species is left. However, the
dense growth of sword grass and the thorny bushes
which clothe the hills and choke the ravines give cover to
muntjac, or barking deer, and many species of small
cats, civets, and other Viverines. These animals come
to the rice paddys, which fill every valley, to hunt for
frogs and fish, but it is difficult to catch them because
of the Chinese who are continually at work in the fields.

We spent a week trapping about Yen-ping and although
we caught a good many animals they were almost
always stolen together with the traps. We had this
same difficulty in Yün-nan as well as in Fukien. None
of us had ever seen natives in any part of the world who
were such unmitigated thieves as the Chinese of these
two provinces. The small mammals are hardly more
abundant than the larger ones for the natives wage an
unceasing war on those about the rice paddys and have
exterminated nearly all but a few widely distributed
forms.

A BAT CAVE IN THE BIG RAVINE

A few days after our arrival in Yen-ping we went
with Mr. Caldwell and his son Oliver to a Taoist temple
seven miles away in a lonely ravine known as Chi-yuen-kang.
The walk to the temple in the early morning
was delightful. The “bamboo chickens” and francolins
were calling all about us and on the way we shot
enough for our first day’s dinner. Both these birds
are abundant in Fukien Province but it is by no means
easy to kill them for they live in such thick cover that
they can only be flushed with difficulty.

Early in the morning we frequently heard the francolins
crowing in the trees or on the top of a hill and
when a cock had taken possession of such a spot the intrusion
of another was almost sure to cause trouble
which only ended when one of them had been driven
off.

For two miles and a half the Big Ravine is a narrow
cut between perpendicular rock walls thickly clothed
to their very summits with bamboo and a tangle of
thorny vines. In the bottom of the gorge a mountain
torrent foams among huge bowlders but becomes a gentle,
slow moving stream when it leaves the cool darkness
of the cañon to spread itself over the terraced rice
fields.

About a mile from the entrance two old temples nestle
into the hillside. One stands just over the water,
– 27 –
but the other clings to the rock wall three hundred feet
above the river, and it was there that we made our
camp.

The old priest in charge did not appear especially
delighted to see us until I slipped a Mexican dollar into
his hand—then it was laughable to see his change of
face. The far end of the balcony was given up to us
while Mr. Caldwell and Oliver put up their beds at
the feet of a grinning idol in the main temple.

We had come to Chi-yuen-kang to hunt serow (see
Chapter XVII) and had brought with us only a few
traps for small mammals. Harry had seen several
serow exhibited for sale on market days in towns along
the river, and all were reported to have been killed near
this ravine. There was a village of considerable size
at the upper end and here we collected a motley lot of
beaters with half a dozen dogs to drive the top of a
mountain which towered about two thousand five hundred
feet above the river.

Never will we forget that climb! We tried to start
at daylight but it was well toward six o’clock before we
got our men together. A Chinaman would drive an
impatient man to apoplexy and an early grave for it
is well-nigh impossible to get him started within an
hour of the appointed time, and with a half dozen the
difficulty is multiplied as many times. Just when you
think all is ready and that there can be no possible reason
for delaying longer, the whole crowd will disappear
suddenly and you discover that they have gone
for “chow.” Then you know that the end is really in
sight, for chow usually is the last thing.

We waited nearly two hours on this particular morning
before we started on the long climb to the top of the
– 28 –
mountain. The sun was simply blazing, and in fifteen
minutes we were soaked with perspiration. When we
were half way up the dogs disappeared in a small
ravine overgrown with bamboo and sword grass and
suddenly broke into a chorus of yelps. They had found
a fresh trail and were driving our way.

Harry ran to a narrow opening in the jungle, shouting
to us to watch another higher up. We were hardly
in position when his rifle banged, followed by such a
bedlam of yells and barks that we thought he must
have killed nothing less than one of the hunters. Before
we reached them Harry appeared, smiling all over,
and dragging a muntjac (Muntiacus) by the fore legs.
He had just made a beautiful shot, for the clearing he
had been watching was not more than ten feet wide and
the muntjac flashed across it at full speed. Caldwell
fired while it was in mid-air and his bullet caught the
animal at the base of the neck, rolling it over stone
dead.

This beautiful little deer in Fukien is hardly larger
than a fox. Its antlers are only two or three inches in
length and rise from an elongated skin-covered pedicel
instead of from the base of the skull as in all other members
of the deer family. On each side of the upper jaw
is a slender tusk, about two inches long, which projects
well beyond the lips and makes a rather formidable
weapon.

We hoped that this muntjac was going to prove a
“good joss,” but instead a disappointing day was in
store for us. When we had worked our way to the very
summit of the mountain under a merciless sun and over
a trail which led through a smothering bamboo jungle,
we saw dozens of fresh serow tracks. The animals were
there without a doubt and we were on the qui vive with
excitement.

A Chinese Hunter and a Muntjac

Brigands Killed in the Yen-ping Rebellion

– 29 –

We selected positions and the men made a long circuit
to drive toward us as Caldwell had directed. After
half an hour had passed we heard them yelling as they
closed in, but what was our disgust to see them solemnly
parading in single file up the bottom of the valley on
an open trail and carefully avoiding all thickets where
a serow could possibly be. As Harry expressed it, “all
the animals had to do was to sit tight and watch the
noble procession pass.” The beaters very evidently knew
nothing whatever about driving nor were we able to
teach them, for they seriously objected to leaving the
open trails and going into the bush.

We worked hard for serow but the men were hopeless
and it was impossible to “still hunt” the animals
at that time of the year. The natives say that in September
when the mushrooms are abundant in the lower
forests the serow leave the mountain tops and thick
cover to feed upon the fungus, and that they may be
killed without the aid of beaters, but at any time the
hunt would involve a vast amount of labor with only a
moderate chance of success. After we had left Fukien,
Mr. Caldwell purchased a fine male and female serow
for us which are especially interesting as they represent
a different subspecies (Capricornis sumatrensis argyrochætes)
from those we killed in Yün-nan.

Chi-yuen-kang did yield us results, however, for we
discovered a wonderful bat cave less than a mile from
our temple. Its entrance was a low round hole half
covered with vegetation, and opening into a high circular
gallery; from this three long corridors branched
off like fingers from the palm of a giant’s hand. The
– 30 –
cave was literally alive with bats. There must have
been ten thousand and on the first day we killed a
hundred, representing seven species and at least four
genera. This was especially remarkable as it is unusual
to find more than two or three species living together.

The cave was a regular bat apartment house for each
corridor was divided by rock partitions into several
small rooms in every one of which bats of different
species were rearing their families. The young in most
instances were only a few days old but were thickly
clustered on the walls and ceilings, and each and every
one was squeaking at the top of its tiny lungs. The
place must have been occupied for scores, if not hundreds,
of years for the floor was knee-deep with dung.

When we returned the day after our first visit we
found that many of the young bats had been removed
by their parents and in some instances entire rooms
had been vacated. After the first day the odor of the
cave was so nauseating that to enable us to go inside
it was necessary to wear gauze pads of iodoform over
our noses.

The bats at this place were killed with bamboo
switches but later we always used a long gill net which
had been especially made in New York. We could hang
the net over the entrance to a cave and, when all was
ready, send a native into the galleries to stir up the
animals. As they flew out they became entangled in
the net and could be caught or killed before they were
able to get away. It was sometimes possible to catch
every specimen in a cavern, and moreover, to secure them
in perfect condition without broken skulls or wings.

If a bat escaped from the net it would never again
– 31 –
strike it, for the animals are wonderfully accurate in
flight and most expert dodgers. Even while in a cave,
where hundreds of bats were in the air, they seldom
flew against us, although we might often be brushed
by their wings; and it was a most difficult thing to hit
them with a bamboo switch. Their ability in dodging
is without doubt a necessary development of their feeding
habits for, with the exception of a few species, bats
live exclusively upon insects and catch them in the
air.

It is a rather terrifying experience for a girl to sit
in a bat cave especially if the light has gone out and
she is in utter darkness. Of course she has a cap tightly
pulled over her ears, for what girl, even if she be a
naturalist’s wife, would venture into a den of evil bats
with one wisp of hair exposed!

All about is the swish of ghostly wings which brush
her face or neck and the air is full of chattering noises
like the grinding of hundreds of tiny teeth. Sometimes
a soft little body plumps into her lap and if she dares
to take her hands from her face long enough to disengage
the clinging animal she is liable to receive a vicious
bite from teeth as sharp as needles. But, withal, it is
good fun, and think how quickly formalin jars or collecting
trays can be filled with beautiful specimens!

THE YEN-PING REBELLION

On Sunday, June 18, we went to the bat cave to
obtain a new supply of specimens. Upon our return,
just as we were about to sit down to luncheon, four
excited Chinese appeared with the following letter from
Mr. Caldwell:

The camp immediately was thrown into confusion for
Da-Ming, the cook, and the burden-bearers were jabbering
excitedly at the top of their voices. The servants
began to pack the loads at once and meanwhile
we ate a roast chicken faster than good table manners
would permit—in fact, we took it in our fingers. We
were both delighted at the prospect of some excitement
and talked almost as fast as the Chinese.

In just one hour from the time Harry’s letter had
been received, we were on the way to Yen-ping. It was
the hottest part of the day, and we were dripping with
perspiration when we left the cool darkness of the ravine
and struck across the open valley, which lay shimmering
in a furnace-like heat. At the first rest house
an the top of the long hill we waited nearly an hour
for our bearers who were struggling under the heavy
loads.

Three miles farther on a poor woman tottered past
us on her peglike feet leaning on the arm of a man. A
short distance more and we came to the second rest
house. We had been there but a few moments when
three panting women, steadying themselves with long
staves and barely able to walk on feet not more than
four inches long, came up the hill. With them were
several men bearing household goods in large bundles
and huge red boxes.

The exhausted women sank upon the benches and
fanned themselves while the perspiration ran down their
– 34 –
flushed faces. They looked so utterly miserable that
we told the cook to give them a piece of cake which
Mrs. Caldwell had sent us the day before. Their gratitude
was pitiful, but, of course, they gave the larger
share to the men.

It was not long before other women and children
appeared on the hill path, all struggling upward under
heavy loads, or tottering along on tightly bound feet.
Probably these women had not walked so far in their
entire lives, but the fear of the Northern soldiers and
what would happen in the city if they took possession
had driven them from their homes.

Farther on we had a clear view across the valley
where a long line of people was filing up to a temple
which nestled into the hillside. Half a mile beyond
were two other temples both crowded with refugees
and their goods. Hundreds of families were seeking
shelter in every little house beside the road and were
overflowing into the cowsheds and pigpens.

At six o’clock we stood on the summit of the hill overlooking
the city and half an hour later were clambering
up the ladder over the high wall of the compound, just
behind Dr. Trimble’s house. We were wet through and
while cooling off heard the story of the morning’s fighting.
It seemed that a certain element in the city was in
coöperation with the representatives of the revolutionary
organization. These men wished to obtain possession
of Yen-ping and, after the rebellion was well started,
to gather forces, march to Foochow, and force the Governor
to declare the independence of the province.

The plot had been hatching for several days, but the
death of Yuan Shi-kai had somewhat delayed its fruition.
Saturday, however, it was known throughout the
– 35 –
city that trouble would soon begin. Sunday morning
at half past three, a band of one hundred men from
Yuchi had marched to Yen-ping where they were received
by a delegation of rebels dressed in white who
opened to them the east gate of the city. Immediately
they began to fire up the streets to intimidate the people
and in a short time were in a hot engagement with
the seventeen Northern soldiers, some of whom threw
away their guns and swam across the river. The remaining
city troops were from the province of Hunan
and their sympathies were really with the South in the
great rebellion. These immediately joined the rebels,
where they were received with open arms. It was reported
that the tao-tai (district mandarin) had asked
for troops from Foochow and that these might be expected
at any moment; thus when they arrived a real
battle could be expected and it was very likely that the
city would be partly destroyed.

We had a picnic supper on the Caldwell’s porch and
discussed the situation. It was the opinion of all that
the foreigners were in no immediate danger, but nevertheless
it was considered wise to be prepared, and we
decided upon posts for each man if it should become
necessary to protect the compound.

Hundreds of people were besieging the missionaries
with requests to be allowed to bring their goods and
families inside the walls, but these necessarily had to be
refused. Had the missionaries allowed the Chinese to
bring their valuables inside it would have cost them the
right of Consular protection and, moreover, their compound
would have been the first to be attacked if looting began.

On Monday morning while we were sitting on the
– 36 –
porch of Mr. Caldwell’s house preparing some bird
skins, there came a sharp crackle of rifle fire and then
a roar of shots. Bullets began to whistle over us and
we could see puffs of smoke as the deep bang of a
black powder gun punctuated the vicious snapping of
the high-power rifles. The firing gradually ceased after
half an hour and we decided to go down to the city to
see what had happened, for, as no Northern troops had
appeared, the cause of the fighting was a mystery.

We went first to the mission hospital which lay
across a deep ravine and only a few yards from the
quarters of the soldiers. At the door of the hospital
compound lay a bloody rag, and we found Dr. Trimble
in the operating room examining a wounded man who
had just been brought in. The fellow had been shot
in the abdomen with a 45-caliber lead ball that had gone
entirely through him, emerging about three inches to
the right of his spine.

From the doctor we got the first real news of the
puzzling situation. It appeared that all the men who had
arrived Sunday morning from Yuchi to join the Yen-ping
rebels were in reality brigands and, to save their
own lives, the Hunan soldiers quartered in the city had
played a clever trick. They had pretended to join the
rebels but at a given signal had turned upon them,
killing or capturing almost every one. Although their
sympathies were really with the South, the Hunan men
knew that the rebels in Yen-ping could not hold the
city against the Northern soldiers from Foochow and,
by crushing the rebellion themselves, they hoped to
avert a bigger fight.

As we could not help the doctor he suggested that
we might be of some assistance to the wounded in the
– 37 –
city, and with rude crosses of red cloth pinned to our
white shirt sleeves we left the hospital, accompanied
by four Chinese attendants bearing a stretcher. In
the compound we met a chair in which was lying an old
man groaning loudly and dripping with blood. Beside
him were his wife and several boys. The poor woman
was crying quietly and, between her sobs, was offering
the wounded man mustard pickles from a small
dish in her hand! Poor things, they have so little to
eat that they believe food will cure all ills!

The bearers set the chair down as we appeared and
lifted the filthy rag which covered a gaping wound in
the man’s shoulder, over which had been plastered a
great mass of cow dung. Just think of the infection,
but it was the only remedy they knew!

We took the man upstairs where Dr. Trimble was
preparing to operate on the fellow who had been shot
in the abdomen. The doctor was working steadily and
quietly, making every move count and inspiring his native
hospital staff with his own coolness; the way this
young missionary handled his cases made us glad that
he was an American.

On the way down the hill several soldiers passed us,
each carrying four or five rifles and slung about with
cartridge belts—plunder stripped from the men who
had been killed. A few hundred yards farther on we
found two brigands lying dead in a narrow street. The
nearest one had fallen on his face and, as we turned him
over, we saw that half his head had been blown away;
the other was staring upward with wide open eyes on
which the flies already were settling in swarms.

There was little use in wasting time over these men
who long ago had passed beyond need of our help, and
– 38 –
we went on rapidly down the alley to the main thoroughfare.
Guided by a small boy, we hurried over the
rough stones for fifteen minutes, and suddenly came
to a man lying at the side of the street, his head propped
on a wooden block. An umbrella once had partly covered
him but had fallen away, leaving him unprotected
in the broiling sun. His face and a terrible wound in
his head were a solid mass of flies, and thousands of
insects were crawling over the blood clots on the stones
beside him. At first we thought he was dead but soon
saw his abdomen move and realized that he was breathing.
It did not seem possible that a human being could
live under such conditions; and yet the bystanders told
us that he had been lying there for thirty hours—he
had been shot early the previous morning and it was
now three o’clock of the next afternoon.

The man was a poor water-carrier who lived with his
wife in the most utter poverty. He had been peering
over the city wall when the firing began Sunday morning
and was one of the first innocent bystanders to pay
the penalty of his curiosity. I asked why he had not
been taken to the hospital, and the answer was that
his wife was too poor to hire anyone to carry him and
he had no friends. So there he lay in the burning sun,
gazed at by hundreds of passers-by, without one hand
being lifted to help him.

Our hospital attendants brushed away the flies, placed
him in the stretcher and started up the long hill, followed
by the haggard, weeping wife and a curious crowd.
On every hand were questions: “Why are these men
taking him away?” “What are they going to do with
him?” But several educated natives who understood
said, “Ing-ai-gidaiie” (A work of love). They got right
– 39 –
there a lesson in Christianity which they will not soon
forget. It is seldom that Chinese try to help an injured
man, for ever present in their minds is the possibility
that he may die and that they will be responsible for
his burial expenses.

We left the stretcher bearers at the corner of the main
street with orders to return as soon as they had deposited
the man in the hospital and, under the guidance
of a boy, hurried toward the east gate where it was said
seven or eight men had been shot. Our guide took us
first to a brigand who had been wounded and left to
die beside the gutter. The corpse was a horrible sight
and with a feeling of deathly nausea we made a hurried
examination and walked to the gate at the end
of the street.

A dozen soldiers were on guard. We learned from
the officer that there were no wounded in the pile of
dead just beyond the entrance, so we turned toward the
river bank and rapidly patrolled the alleys leading to
the tao-tai’s yamen (official residence) where the firing
had been heaviest. The yamen was crowded with soldiers,
and we were informed that the dead had all been
removed and that there were no wounded—a grim
statement which told its own story.

The yamen is but a short distance from the hospital
so we climbed the hill to the compound. The sun was
simply blazing and I realized then what the wounded
men must have suffered lying in the heat without shelter.
We returned to the house and were resting on the
upper porch when suddenly, far down the river, we
saw the glint of rifle barrels in the sunlight, and with
field glasses made out a long line of khaki-clad men
winding along the shore trail. At the same time two
– 40 –
huge boats filled with soldiers came into view heading
for the water gate of the city. These were undoubtedly
the Northern troops from Foochow who were expected Monday night.

Even as we looked there came a sudden roar of
musketry and a cloud of smoke drifted up from the
barracks right below us—then a rattling fusillade of
shots. We could see soldiers running along the walls
firing at men below and often in our direction. Bullets
hummed in the air like angry bees and we rushed for
cover, but in a few moments the firing ceased as suddenly
as it began.

We were at a loss to know what it all meant and
why the troops were firing upon the Northern soldiers
whom they wished to placate. It was still a mystery
when we sat down to dinner at half past seven, but a
few minutes later Mr. Bankhardt rushed in saying that
he had just received a note from the tao-tai. The mandarin’s
personal servant had brought word that the
Northern soldiers, who had just entered the city, were
going to kill him and he begged the missionaries for
assistance. Bankhardt also told us of the latest developments
in the situation. It seems that the city soldiers
supposed the Northern troops to be brigands and
had fired upon them and killed several before they discovered
their mistake. A very delicate situation had
thus been precipitated, for the Northern commander
believed that it was treachery and intended to attack
the barracks in the morning and kill every man whom
he found with a rifle, as well as all the city officials.

The story of the way in which the missionaries acted
as peacemakers, saved the tao-tai, and prevented the
slaughter which surely would have taken place in the
– 41 –
morning, is too long to be told here, for it was accomplished
only after hours of the talk and “face saving”
so dear to the heart of the Oriental. Suffice it to say
that through the exercise of great tact and a thorough
understanding of the Chinese character they were able
to settle the matter without bloodshed.

The following day twenty brigands were given a so-called
trial, marched off to the west gate, beheaded amid
great enthusiasm, and the incident was closed. In the
afternoon a messenger called and delivered to each of
us an official letter from the commander of the Northern
troops thanking us for the part we had played in averting
trouble and bringing the matter to a peaceful end.

An interesting sidelight on the affair was received
a few days later. A young man, a Christian, who was
born in the same town from which a number of the
brigands had come, went to his house on Monday night
after the fight and found seven of the robbers concealed
in his bedroom. He was terrified because if they were
discovered he and all his family would be killed for aiding
the bandits. He told them they must leave at once,
but they pleaded with him to let them stay for they
knew there were soldiers at every corner and that it
would be impossible to get away.

While he was imploring them to go, a knock sounded
at the door. He pushed the brigands into the courtyard,
and opened to three soldiers. They said: “We
understand you have brigands in your house.” He
was trembling with fear, but answered, “Come in and
see for yourself, if you think so.”

The soldiers were satisfied by his frank open manner
and, as they knew him to be a good man, did not
search the house, but went away. The poor fellow was
– 42 –
frightened nearly to death, but as his place was being
watched it was impossible for the brigands to leave
during the day.

At night they stripped themselves, shaved their heads,
and dressed like coolies, and were able to get to the
ladder down the city wall just below the mission compound
where they could escape into the hills.

The day after this occurrence, about four o’clock in
the afternoon, a breathless Chinese appeared at the
house with a note to Mr. Bankhardt saying that his
Chinese teacher and the mission school cook had been
arrested by the Northern soldiers and were to be beheaded
in an hour. We hurried to the police office
where they were confined and found that not only the
two men but three others were in custody.

The mission cook owned a small restaurant under the
management of one of his relatives and, while Bankhardt’s
teacher and the other man were sitting at a
table, some Northern soldiers appeared, one of whom
owed the restaurant keeper a small amount of money.
When asked to pay, the soldier turned upon him and
shouted: “You have been assisting the brigands. I saw
some of them carrying goods into your house.” Thereupon
the soldiers arrested everyone in the shop.

The police officials were quite ready to release the
teacher and the other man upon our statements, but
they would not allow the cook to go. His hands were
kept tightly bound and he was chained to a post by
the neck. The soldier who arrested him was his sole
accuser, but of course, others would appear to uphold
him in his charge if it were necessary.

The cook was as innocent as any one of the missionaries,
but it required several hours of work and threats
– 43 –
of complaint to the government at Foochow to prevent
the man from being summarily executed.

We were not able to get any mail from Foochow
during the rebellion because the constant stream of
Northern soldiers on their way up the river had paralyzed
the entire country to such an extent that all the
river men had fled.

The soldiers were firing for target practice upon
every boat they saw on the river and dozens of men
had been killed and then robbed. The Northern commander
told us frankly that this could not be prevented,
and when we announced that we were going to
start with all the missionaries down the river on the
following day, he was very much disturbed. He insisted
that we have American flags displayed on our
boats to prevent being fired upon by the soldiers.

Although it had taken eight days to work our way
laboriously through the rapids and up the river from
Foochow to Yen-ping, we covered the same distance
down the river in twenty-four hours and had breakfast
with Mr. Kellogg at his house the morning after we
left Yen-ping. In two days our equipment was repacked
and ready for the trip to Futsing to hunt the
blue tiger.

HUNTING THE “GREAT INVISIBLE”

For many years before Mr. Caldwell went to Yen-ping
he had been stationed at the city of Futsing, about
thirty miles from Foochow. Much of his work consisted
of itinerant trips during which he visited the
various mission stations under his charge. He almost
invariably went on foot from place to place and carried
with him a butterfly net and a rifle, so that to so
keen a naturalist each day’s walk was full of interest.

The country was infested with man-eating tigers,
and very often the villagers implored him to rid their
neighborhood of some one of the yellow raiders which
had been killing their children, pigs, or cattle. During
ten years he had killed seven tigers in the Futsing
region. He often said that his gun had been just as
effective in carrying Christianity to the natives as had
his evangelistic work. Although Mr. Caldwell has been
especially fortunate and has killed his tigers without
ever really hunting them, nevertheless it is a most uncertain
sport as we were destined to learn. The tiger is
the “Great Invisible”—he is everywhere and nowhere,
here today and gone tomorrow. A sportsman in China
may get his shot the first day out or he may hunt for
weeks without ever seeing a tiger even though they
are all about him; and it is this very uncertainty that
makes the game all the more fascinating.

The part of Fukien Province about Futsing includes
– 45 –
mountains of considerable height, many of which are
planted with rice and support a surprising number of
Chinese who are grouped in closely connected villages.
While the cultivated valleys afford no cover for tiger
and the mountain slopes themselves are usually more or
less denuded of forest, yet the deep and narrow ravines,
choked with sword grass and thorny bramble, offer an
impenetrable retreat in which an animal can sleep during
the day without fear of being disturbed. It is
possible for a man to make his way through these lairs
only by means of the paths and tunnels which have been
opened by the tigers themselves.

Mr. Caldwell’s usual method of hunting was to lead
a goat with one or two kids to an open place where
they could be fastened just outside the edge of the lair,
and then to conceal himself a few feet away. The bleating
of the goats would usually bring the tiger into the
open where there would be an opportunity for a shot
in the late afternoon.

Mr. Caldwell’s first experience in hunting tigers was
with a shotgun at the village of Lung-tao. His burden-bearers
had not arrived with the basket containing his
rifle, and as it was already late in the afternoon, he suggested
to Da-Da, the Chinese boy who was his constant
companion, that they make a preliminary inspection
of the lair even though they carried only shotguns loaded
with lead slugs about the size of buckshot.

They tethered a goat just outside the edge of the
lair and the tiger responded to its bleating almost immediately.
Caldwell did not see the animal until it
came into the open about fifty yards away and remained
in plain view for almost half an hour. The
tiger seemed to suspect danger and crouched on the
– 46 –
terrace, now and then putting his right foot forward
a short distance and drawing it slowly back again. He
had approached along a small trail, but before he could
reach the goat it was necessary to cross an open space
a few yards in width, and to do this the animal flattened
himself like a huge striped serpent. His head
was extended so that the throat and chin were touching
the ground, and there was absolutely no motion
of the body other than the hips and shoulders as the
beast slid along at an amazingly rapid rate. But at
the instant the cat gained the nearest cover it made
three flying leaps and landed at the foot of the terrace
upon which the goat was tied.

“Just then he saw me,” said Mr. Caldwell, “and
slowly pushed his great black-barred face over the edge
of the grass not fifteen feet away.

“I fired point-blank at his head and neck. He leaped
into the air with the blood spurting over the grass,
and fell into a heap, but gathered himself and slid down
over the terraces. As he went I fired a second load of
slugs into his hip. He turned about, slowly climbed the
hill parallel with us, and stood looking back at me, his
face streaming with blood.

“I was fumbling in my coat trying to find other
shells, but before I could reload the gun he walked
unsteadily into the lair and lay down. It was already
too dark to follow and the next morning a bloody trail
showed where he had gone upward into the grass.
Later, in the same afternoon, he was found dead by
some Chinese more than three miles away.”

During his many experiences with the Futsing tigers
Mr. Caldwell has learned much about their habits and
– 47 –
peculiarities, and some of his observations are given
in the following pages.

“The tiger is by instinct a coward when confronted
by his greatest enemy—man. Bold and daring as he
may be when circumstances are in his favor, he will hurriedly
abandon a fresh kill at the first cry of a shepherd
boy attending a flock on the mountain-side and will
always weigh conditions before making an attack. If
things do not exactly suit him nothing will tempt him
to charge into the open upon what may appear to be an
isolated and defenseless goat.

“An experience I had in April, 1910, will illustrate
this point. I led a goat into a ravine where a tiger which
had been working havoc among the herds of the farmers
was said to live. This animal only a few days previous
to my hunt had attacked a herd of cows and killed three
of them, but on this occasion the beast must have suspected
danger and was exceedingly cautious. He advanced
under cover along a trail until within one hundred
feet of the goat and there stopped to make a survey
of the surroundings. Peering into the valley, he
saw two men at a distance of five hundred yards or
more cutting grass and, after watching intently for a
time, the great cat turned and bounded away into the
bushes.

“On another occasion this tiger awaited an opportunity
to attack a cow which a farmer was using in
plowing his field. The man had unhitched his cow
and squatted down in the rice paddy to eat his mid-day
meal, when the tiger suddenly rushed from cover and
killed the animal only a few yards behind the peasant.
This shows how daring a tiger may be when he is able
to strike from the rear, and when circumstances seem
– 48 –
to favor an attack. I have known tigers to rush at a
dog or hog standing inside a Chinese house where there
was the usual confusion of such a dwelling, and in almost
every instance the victim was killed, although it
was not always carried away.

“There is probably no creature in the wilds which
shows such a combination of daring strategy and slinking
cowardice as the tiger. Often courage fails him
after he has secured his victim, and he releases it to dash
off into the nearest wood.

“I knew of two Chinese who were deer hunting on a
mountain-side when a large tiger was routed from his
bed. The beast made a rushing attack on the man
standing nearest to the path of his retreat, and seizing
him by the leg dragged him into the ravine below.
Luckily the man succeeded in grasping a small tree
whereupon the tiger released his hold, leaving his victim
lying upon the ground almost paralyzed with pain and
fear.

“A group of men were gathering fuel on the hills
near Futsing when a tiger which had been sleeping in
the high grass was disturbed. The enraged beast
tinned upon the peasants, killing two of them instantly
and striking another a ripping blow with his paw which
sent him lifeless to the terrace below. The beast did
not attempt to drag either of its victims into the bush
or to attack the other persons near by.

“The strength and vitality of a full grown tiger are
amazing. I had occasion to spend the night a short time
ago in a place where a tiger had performed some remarkable
feats. Just at dusk one of these marauders
visited the village and discovered a cow and her six-months-old
calf in a pen which had been excavated in
– 49 –
the side of a hill and adjoined a house. There was no
possible way to enter the enclosure except by a door
opening from the main part of the dwelling or to descend
from above. The tiger jumped from the roof
upon the neck of the heifer, killing it instantly, and the
inmates of the house opened the door just in time to see
the animal throw the calf out bodily and leap after it
himself. I measured the embankment and found that
the exact height was twelve and a half feet.

“The same tiger one noon on a foggy day attacked
a hog, just back of the village and carried it into the
hills. The villagers pursued the beast and overtook
it within half a mile. When the hog, which dressed
weighed more than two hundred pounds, was found,
it had no marks or bruises upon it other than the deep
fang wounds in the neck. This is another instance
where courage failed a tiger after he had made off with
his kill to a safe distance. The Chinese declare that
when carrying such a load a tiger never attempts to
drag its prey, but throws it across its back and races
off at top speed.

“The finest trophy taken from Fukien Province in
years I shot in May, 1910. Two days previous to my
hunt this tiger had killed and eaten a sixteen-year-old
boy. I happened to be in the locality and decided to
make an attempt to dispose of the troublesome beast.
Obtaining a mother goat with two small kids, I led them
into a ravine near where the boy had been killed. The
goat was tied to a tree a short distance from the lair,
and the kids were concealed in the tall grass well in
toward the place where the tiger would probably be.
I selected a suitable spot and kneeled down behind a
bank of ferns and grass. The fact that one may be
– 50 –
stalked by the very beast which one is hunting adds to
the excitement and keeps one’s nerves on edge. I expected
that the tiger would approach stealthily as long
as he could not see the goat, as the usual plan of attack,
so far as my observation goes, is to creep up under
cover as far as possible before rushing into the open.
In any case the tiger would be within twenty yards of
me before it could be seen.

“For more than two hours I sat perfectly still, alert
and waiting, behind the little blind of ferns and grass.
There was nothing to break the silence other than the
incessant bleating of the goats and the unpleasant rasping
call of the mountain jay. I had about given up hope
of a shot when suddenly the huge head of the man-eater
emerged from the bush, exactly where I had expected
he would appear and within fifteen feet of the
kids. The back, neck, and head of the beast were in
almost the same plane as he moved noiselessly forward.

“I had implicit confidence in the killing power of the
gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge
brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten
feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring.
A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a
matter of precaution as the tiger had fallen behind rank
grass, and the bullet passed through the shoulder blade
lodging in the spine. The beast measured more than
nine feet and weighed almost four hundred pounds.

“Upon hearing the shots the villagers swarmed into
the ravine, each eager not so much to see their slain tormentor
as to gather up the blood. But little attention
was paid to the tiger until every available drop was
sopped up with rags torn from their clothing, whilst men
– 51 –
and children even pulled up the blood-soaked grass. I
learned that the blood of a tiger is used for two purposes.
A bit of blood-stained cloth is tied about the
neck of a child as a preventive against either measles
or smallpox, and tiger flesh is eaten for the same purpose.
It is also said that if a handkerchief stained with
tiger blood is waved in front of an attacking dog the
animal will slink away cowed and terrified.

“From the Chinese point of view the skin is not the
most valuable part of a tiger. Almost always before a
hunt is made, or a trap is built, the villagers hum incense
before the temple god, and an agreement is made
to the effect that if the enterprise be successful the skin
of the beast taken becomes the property of the gods.
Thus it happens that in many of the temples handsome
tiger-skin robes may be found spread in the chair occupied
by the noted ‘Duai Uong,’ or the god of the
land. When a hunt is successful, the flesh and bones are
considered of greatest value, and it often happens that
a number of cows are killed and their flesh mixed with
that of the tiger to be sold at the exorbitant price cheerfully
paid for tiger meat. The bones are boiled for a
number of days until a gelatine-like product results,
and this is believed to be exceptionally efficacious medicine.

“Notwithstanding the danger of still-hunting a tiger
in the tangle of its lair, one cannot but feel richly rewarded
for the risk when one begins to sum up one’s
observations. The most interesting result of investigating
an oft-frequented lair is concerning the animal’s
food. That a tiger always devours its prey upon the
spot where it is taken or in the adjacent bush is an
erroneous idea. This is often true when the kill is too
– 52 –
heavy to be carried for a long distance, but it is by no
means universally so. Not long ago the remains of a
young boy were found in a grave adjacent to a tiger’s
lair a few miles from Futsing city. No child had
been reported missing in the immediate neighborhood
and everything indicated that the boy had been brought
alive to this spot from a considerable distance. The
sides of the grave were besmeared with the blood of
the unfortunate victim, indicating that the tiger had
tortured it just as a cat plays with a mouse as long as it
remains alive.

“In the lair of a tiger there are certain terraces, or
places under overhanging trees, which are covered with
bones, and are evidently spots to which the animal
brings its prey to be devoured. On such a terrace one
will find the remains of deer, wild hog, dog, pig, porcupine,
pangolin, and other animals both domestic and
wild. A fresh kill shows that with its rasp-like tongue
the tiger licks off all the hair of its prey before devouring
it and the hair will be found in a circle around what
remains of the kill. The Chinese often raid a lair in
order to gather up the quills of the porcupine and the
bony scales of the pangolin which are esteemed for
medicinal purposes.

“In addition to the larger animals, tigers feed upon
reptiles and frogs which they find among the rice fields.
On the night of April 22, 1914, a party of frog catchers
were returning from a hunt when the man carrying the
load of frogs was attacked by a tiger and killed. The
animal made no attempt to drag the man away and it
would appear that it was attracted by the croaking of
the frogs.

“One often finds trees ‘marked’ by tigers beside some
– 53 –
trail or path in, or adjacent to, a lair. Catlike, the
tiger measures its full length upon a tree, standing in a
convenient place, and with its powerful claws rips
deeply through the bark. This sign is doubly interesting
to the sportsman as it not only indicates the presence
of a tiger in the immediate vicinity but serves to
give an accurate idea as to the size of the beast. The
trails leading into a lair often are marked in a different
way. In doing this the animal rakes away the grass
with a forepaw and gathers it into a pile, but claw
prints never appear.”

THE BLUE TIGER

After one has traveled in a Chinese sampan for several
days the prospect of a river journey is not very
alluring but we had a most agreeable surprise when we
sailed out of Foochow in a chartered house boat to hunt
the “blue tiger” at Futsing. In fact, we had all the
luxury of a private yacht, for our boat contained a large
central cabin with a table and chairs and two staterooms
and was manned by a captain and crew of six
men—all for $1.50 per day!

In the evening we talked of the blue tiger for a long
time before we spread our beds on the roof of the
boat and went to sleep under the stars. We left the
boat shortly after daylight at Daing-nei for the six-mile
walk to Lung-tao. To my great surprise the
coolies were considerably distressed at the lightness of
our loads. In this region they are paid by weight and
some of the bearers carry almost incredible burdens. As
an example, one of our men came into camp swinging a
125-pound trunk on each end of his pole, laughing and
chatting as gayly as though he had not been carrying
250 pounds for six miles under a broiling sun.

Mr. Caldwell’s Chinese hunter, Da-Da, lived at
Lung-tao and we found his house to be one of several
built on the outskirts of a beautiful grove of gum and
banyan trees. Although it was exceptionally clean for
a Chinese dwelling, we pitched our tents a short
– 55 –
distance away. At first we were somewhat doubtful about
sleeping outside, but after one night indoors we decided
that any risk was preferable to spending another
hour in the stifling heat of the house.

It was probable that a tiger would be so suspicious
of the white tents that it would not attack us, but nevertheless
during the first nights we were rather wakeful
and more than once at some strange night sound seized
our rifles and flashed the electric lamp into the darkness.

Tigers often come into this village. Only a few hundred
yards from our camp site, in 1911, a tiger had
rushed into the house of one of the peasants and attempted
to steal a child that had fallen asleep at its play
under the family table. All was quiet in the house
when suddenly the animal dashed through the open
door. The Chinese declare that the gods protected
the infant, for the beast missed his prey and seizing the
leg of the table against which the baby’s head was resting,
bolted through the door dragging the table into the
courtyard.

This was the work of the famous “blue tiger” which
we had come to hunt and which had on two occasions
been seen by Mr. Caldwell. The first time he heard of
this strange beast was in the spring of 1910. The animal
was reported as having been seen at various places
within an area of a few miles almost simultaneously and
so mysterious were its movements that the Chinese declared
it was a spirit of the devil. After several unsuccessful
hunts Mr. Caldwell finally saw the tiger at
close range but as he was armed with only a shotgun
it would have been useless to shoot.

His second view of the beast was a few weeks later
– 56 –
and in the same place. I will give the story in his own
words:

“I selected a spot upon a hilltop and cleared away
the grass and ferns with a jack-knife for a place to tie
the goat. I concealed myself in the bushes ten feet
away to await the attack, but the unexpected happened
and the tiger approached from the rear.

“When I first saw the beast he was moving stealthily
along a little trail just across a shallow ravine. I supposed,
of course, that he was trying to locate the goat
which was bleating loudly, but to my horror I saw that
he was creeping upon two boys who had entered the
ravine to cut grass. The huge brute moved along lizard-fashion
for a few yards and then cautiously lifted his
head above the grass. He was within easy springing
distance when I raised my rifle, but instantly I realized
that if I wounded the animal the boys would certainly
meet a horrible death.

“Tigers are usually afraid of the human voice so
instead of firing I stepped from the bushes, yelling and
waving my arms. The huge cat, crouched for a spring,
drew back, wavered uncertainly for a moment, and then
slowly slipped away into the grass. The boys were
saved but I had lost the opportunity I had sought for
over a year.

“However, I had again seen the animal about which
so many strange tales had been told. The markings
of the beast are strikingly beautiful. The ground color
is of a delicate shade of maltese, changing into light
gray-blue on the underparts. The stripes are well defined
and like those of the ordinary yellow tiger.”

Before I left New York Mr. Caldwell had written
me repeatedly urging me to stop at Futsing on the way
– 57 –
to Yün-nan to try with him for the blue tiger which
was still in the neighborhood. I was decidedly skeptical
as to its being a distinct species, but nevertheless it was
a most interesting animal and would certainly be well
worth getting.

I believed then, and my opinion has since been
strengthened, that it is a partially melanistic phase of
the ordinary yellow tiger. Black leopards are common
in India and the Malay Peninsula and as only a single
individual of the blue tiger has been reported the evidence
hardly warrants the assumption that it represents
a distinct species.

We hunted the animal for five weeks. The brute
ranged in the vicinity of two or three villages about
seven miles apart, but was seen most frequently near
Lung-tao. He was as elusive as a will o’ the wisp, killing
a dog or goat in one village and by the time we
had hurried across the mountains appearing in another
spot a few miles away, leaving a trail of terrified natives
who flocked to our camp to recount his depredations.
He was in truth the “Great Invisible” and it
seemed impossible that we should not get him sooner or
later, but we never did.

Once we missed him by a hair’s breadth through sheer
bad luck, and it was only by exercising almost super-human
restraint that we prevented ourselves from doing
bodily harm to the three Chinese who ruined our hunt.
Every evening for a week we had faithfully taken a
goat into the “Long Ravine,” for the blue tiger had
been seen several times near this lair. On the eighth
afternoon we were in the “blind” at three o’clock as
usual. We had tied a goat to a tree nearby and her two
kids were but a few feet away.

– 58 –

The grass-filled lair lay shimmering in the breathless
heat, silent save for the echoes of the bleating goats.
Crouched behind the screen of branches, for three long
hours we sat in the patchwork shade,—motionless,
dripping with perspiration, hardly breathing,—and
watched the shadows steal slowly down the narrow
ravine.

It was a wild place which seemed to have been cut
out of the mountain side with two strokes of a mighty
ax and was choked with a tangle of thorny vines and
sword grass. Impenetrable as a wall of steel, the only
entrance was by the tiger tunnels which drove their
twisting way through the murderous growth far in toward
its gloomy heart.

The shadows had passed over us and just reached a
lone palm tree on the opposite hillside. By that I knew
it was six o’clock and in half an hour another day of
disappointment would be ended. Suddenly at the left
and just below us there came the faintest crunching
sound as a loose stone shifted under a heavy weight;
then a rustling in the grass. Instantly the captive goat
gave a shrill bleat of terror and tugged frantically at
the rope which held it to the tree.

At the first sound Harry had breathed in my ear
“Get ready, he’s coming.” I was half kneeling with my
heavy .405 Winchester pushed forward and the hammer
up. The blood drummed in my ears and my neck
muscles ached with the strain but I thanked Heaven
that my hands were steady.

Caldwell sat like a graven image, the stock of his
little 22 caliber high power Savage nestling against his
cheek. Our eyes met for an instant and I knew in that
glance that the blue tiger would never make another
– 59 –
charge, for if I missed him, Harry wouldn’t. For ten
minutes we waited and my heart lost a beat when twenty
feet away the grass began to move again—but rapidly
and up the ravine.

I saw Harry watching the lair with a puzzled look
which changed to one of disgust as a chorus of yells
sounded across the ravine and three Chinese wood cutters
appeared on the opposite slope. They were taking
a short cut home, shouting to drive away the tigers—and
they had succeeded only too well, for the blue
tiger had slipped back to the heart of the lair from
whence he had come.

He had been nearly ours and again we had lost him!
I felt so badly that I could not even swear and it wasn’t
the fact that Harry was a missionary which kept me
from it, either. Caldwell exclaimed just once, for his
disappointment was even more bitter than mine; he had
been hunting this same tiger off and on for six years.

It was useless for us to wait longer that evening and
we pushed our way through the sword grass to the entrance
of the tunnel down which the tiger had come.
There in the soft earth were the great footprints where
he had crouched at the entrance to take a cautious
survey before charging into the open.

As we looked, Harry suddenly turned to me and said:
“Roy, let’s go into the lair. There is just one chance
in a thousand that we may get a shot.” Now I must
admit that I was not very enthusiastic about that little
excursion, but in we went, crawling on our hands and
knees up the narrow passage. Every few feet we passed
side branches from the main tunnel in any one of which
the tiger might easily have been lying in wait and
could have killed us as we passed. It was a foolhardy
– 60 –
thing to do and I am free to admit that I was scared.
It was not long before Harry twisted about and said:
“Roy, I haven’t lost any tigers in here; let’s get out.”
And out we came faster than we went in.

This was only one of the times when the “Great
Invisible” was almost in our hands. A few days later
a Chinese found the blue tiger asleep under a rice bank
early in the afternoon. Frightened almost to death he
ran a mile and a half to our camp only to find that
we had left half an hour before for another village
where the brute had killed two wild cats early in the
morning.

Again, the tiger pushed open the door of a house at
daybreak just as the members of the family were getting
up, stole a dog from the “heaven’s well,” dragged
it to a hillside and partly devoured it. We were in camp
only a mile away and our Chinese hunters found the
carcass on a narrow ledge in the sword grass high up
on the mountain side. The spot was an impossible
one to watch and we set a huge grizzly bear trap which
had been carried with us from New York.

It seemed out of the question for any animal to return
to the carcass of the dog without getting caught
and yet the tiger did it. With his hind quarters on the
upper terrace he dropped down, stretched his long neck
across the trap, seized the dog which had been wired
to a tree and pulled it away. It was evident that he
was quite unconscious of the trap for his fore feet had
actually been placed upon one of the jaws only two
inches from the pan which would have sprung it.

One afternoon we responded to a call from Bui-tao,
a village seven miles beyond Lung-tao, where the blue
tiger had been seen that day. The natives assured us
– 61 –
that the animal continually crossed a hill, thickly
clothed with pines and sword grass just above the village
and even though it was late when we arrived Harry
thought it wise to set the trap that night.

It was pitch dark before we reached the ridge carrying
the trap, two lanterns, an electric flash-lamp and a
wretched little dog for bait. We had been engaged for
about fifteen minutes making a pen for the dog, and
Caldwell and I were on our knees over the trap when
suddenly a low rumbling growl came from the grass
not twenty feet away. We jumped to our feet just as
it sounded again, this time ending in a snarl. The tiger
had arrived a few moments too early and we were in
the rather uncomfortable position of having to return
to the village by way of a narrow trail through the
jungle. With our rifles ready and the electric lamp
cutting a brilliant path in the darkness we walked slowly
toward the edge of the sword grass hoping to see the
flash of the tiger’s eyes, but the beast backed off beyond
the range of the light into an impenetrable tangle where
we could not follow. Apparently he was frightened by
the lantern, for we did not hear him again.

After nearly a month of disappointments such as
these Mr. Heller joined us at Bui-tao with Mr. Kellogg.
Caldwell thought it advisable to shift camp to the
Ling-suik monastery, about twelve miles away, where
he had once spent a summer with his family and had
killed several tigers. This was within the blue tiger’s
range and, moreover, had the advantage of offering a
better general collecting ground than Bui-tao; thus with
Heller to look after the small mammals we could begin
to make our time count for something if we did not get
the tiger.

– 62 –

Ling-suik is a beautiful temple, or rather series of
temples, built into a hillside at the end of a long narrow
valley which swells out like a great bowl between bamboo
clothed mountains, two thousand feet in height. On
his former visit Mr. Caldwell had made friends with the
head priest and we were allowed to establish ourselves
upon the broad porch of the third and highest building.
It was an ideal place for a collecting camp and
would have been delightful except for the terrible heat
which was rendered doubly disagreeable by the almost
continual rain.

The priests who shuffled about the temples were a
hard lot. Most of them were fugitives from justice and
certainly looked the part, for a more disreputable, diseased
and generally undesirable body of men I have
never seen.

Our stay at Ling-suik was productive and the temple
life interesting. We slept on the porch and each morning,
about half an hour before daylight, the measured
strokes of a great gong sounded from the temple just
below us. Boom—boom—boom—boom it went, then
rapidly bang, bang, bang. It was a religious alarm
clock to rouse the world.

A little later when the upturned gables and twisted
dolphins on the roof had begun to take definite shape in
the gray light of the new day, the gong boomed out
again, doors creaked, and from their cell-like rooms
shuffled the priests to yawn and stretch themselves before
the early service. The droning chorus of hoarse
voices, swelling in a meaningless half-wild chant, harmonized
strangely with the romantic surroundings of
the temple and become our daily matin and evensong.

The Ling-suik Monastery

A Priest of Ling-suik

– 63 –

At the first gong we slipped from beneath our
mosquito nets and dressed to be ready for the bats which
fluttered into the building to hide themselves beneath
the tiles and rafters. When daylight had fully come we
scattered to the four winds of heaven to inspect traps,
hunt barking deer, or collect birds, but gathered again
at nine o’clock for breakfast and to deposit our spoil.
Caldwell and I always spent the afternoon at the blue
tiger’s lair but the animal had suddenly shifted his
operations back to Lung-tao and did not appear at
Ling-suik while we were there.

Our work in Fukien taught us much that may be of
help to other naturalists who contemplate a visit to this
province. We satisfied ourselves that summer collecting
is impracticable, for the heat is so intense and the
vegetation so heavy that only meager results can be obtained
for the efforts expended. Continual tramping
over the mountains in the blazing sun necessarily must
have its effect upon the strongest constitution, and even
a man like Mr. Caldwell, who has become thoroughly
acclimated, is not immune.

Both Caldwell and I lost from fifteen to twenty
pounds in weight during the time we hunted the blue
tiger and each of us had serious trouble from abscesses.
I have never worked in a more trying climate—even
that of Borneo and the Dutch East Indies where I collected
in 1909-10, was much less debilitating than
Fukien in the summer. The average temperature was
about 95 degrees in the shade, but the humidity was so
high that one felt as though one were wrapped in a wet
blanket and even during a six weeks’ rainless period
the air was saturated with moisture from the sea-winds.

In winter the weather is raw and damp, but collecting
– 64 –
then would be vastly easier than in summer, not only on
account of climatic conditions, but because much of the
vegetation disappears and there is an opportunity for
“still hunting.”

Trapping for small mammal is especially difficult because
of the dense population. The mud dykes and the
rice fields usually are covered with tracks of civets, mongooses,
and cats which come to hunt frogs or fish, but if
a trap is set it either catches a Chinaman or promptly
is stolen. Moreover, the small mammals are neither
abundant nor varied in number of species, and the larger
forms, such as tiger, leopard, wild pig and serow are exceedingly
difficult to kill.

While our work in the province was done during an
unfavorable season and in only two localities, yet enough
was seen of the general conditions to make it certain
that a thorough zoölogical study of the region would
require considerable time and hard work and that the
results, so far as a large collection of mammals is concerned,
would not be highly satisfactory. Work in the
western part of the province among the Bohea Hills
undoubtedly would be more profitable, but even there
it would be hardly worth while for an expedition with
limited time and money.

Bird life is on a much better footing, but the ornithology
of Fukien already has received considerable attention
through the collections of Swinhoe, La Touche,
Styan, Ricketts, Caldwell and others, and probably not
a great number of species remain to be described.

Much work could still be done upon the herpetology
of the region, however, and I believe that this branch of
zoölogy would be well worth investigation for reptiles
– 65 –
and batrachians are fairly abundant and the natives
would rather assist than retard one’s efforts.

The language of Fukien is a greater annoyance than
in any other of the Chinese coast provinces. The Foochow
dialect (which is one of the most difficult to learn)
is spoken only within fifty or one hundred miles of the
city. At Yen-ping Mr. Caldwell, who speaks “Foochow”
perfectly, could not understand a word of the
“southern mandarin” which is the language of that
region, and near Futsing, where a colony of natives
from Amoy have settled, the dialect is unintelligible to
one who knows only “Foochow.”

Travel in Fukien is an unceasing trial, for transport
is entirely by coolies who carry from eighty to one hundred
pounds. The men are paid by distance or weight;
therefore, when coolies finally have been obtained there
is the inevitable wrangling over loads so that from one
to two hours are consumed before the party can start.

But the worst of it is that one can never be certain
when one’s entire outfit will arrive at its new destination.
Some men walk much faster than others, some will delay
a long time for tea, or may give out altogether if
the day be hot, with the result that the last load will
arrive perhaps five or six hours after the first one.

As horses are not to be had, if one does not walk the
only alternative is to be carried in a mountain chair,
which is an uncomfortable, trapeze-like affair and only
to be found along the main highways. On the whole,
transport by man-power in China is so uncertain and
expensive that for a large expedition it forms a grave
obstacle to successful work, if time and funds be limited.

On the other hand, servants are cheap and usually
– 66 –
good. We employed a very fair cook who received
monthly seven dollars Mexican (then about three and
one-half dollars gold), and “boys” were hired at from
five to seven dollars (Mexican). As none of the servants
knew English they could be obtained at much lower
wages, but English-speaking cooks usually receive from
fifteen to twenty dollars (Mexican) a month.

It was hard to leave Fukien without the blue tiger
but we had hunted him unsuccessfully for five weeks
and there was other and more important work awaiting
us in Yün-nan. It required thirty porters to transport
our baggage from the Ling-suik monastery to Daing-nei,
twenty-one miles away, where two houseboats were
to meet us, and by ten o’clock in the evening we were
lying off Pagoda Anchorage awaiting the flood tide to
take us to Foochow. We made our beds on the deck
house and in the morning opened our eyes to find the
boat tied to the wharf at the Custom House on the
Bund, and ourselves in full view of all Foochow had it
been awake at that hour.

The week of packing and repacking that followed was
made easy for us by Claude Kellogg, who acted as our
ministering angel. I think there must be a special
Providence that watches over wandering naturalists and
directs them to such men as Kellogg, for without divine
aid they could never be found. When we last saw him,
he stood on the stone steps of the water front waving
his hat as we slipped away on the tide, to board the
S. S. Haitan for Hongkong.

THE WOMEN OF CHINA

Y. B. A.

The schools for native girls at Foochow and Yen-ping
interested us greatly, even when we first came to
China, but we could not appreciate then as we did later
the epoch-making step toward civilization of these institutions.

How much the missionaries are able to accomplish
from a religious standpoint is a question which we do
not wish to discuss, but no one who has ever lived among
them can deny that the opening of schools and the diffusing
of western knowledge are potent factors in the
development of the people. The Chinese were not slow
even in the beginning to see the advantages of a foreign
education for their boys and now, along the coast at
least, some are beginning to make sacrifices for their
daughters as well. The Woman’s College, which was
opened recently in Foochow, is one of the finest buildings
of the Republic, and when one sees its bright-faced
girls dressed in their quaint little pajama-like garments,
it is difficult to realize that outside such schools they are
still slaves in mind and body to those iron rules of Confucius
which have molded the entire structure of Chinese
society for over 2400 years.

The position of women in China today, and the rules
which govern the household of every orthodox Chinese,
– 68 –
are the direct heritage of Confucianism. The following
translation by Professor J. Legge from the Narratives
of the Confucian School, chapter 26, is illuminating:

A Chinese bride owes implicit obedience to her
mother-in-law, and as she is often reared by her husband’s
family, or else married to him as a mere child,
– 69 –
and is under the complete control of his mother for a
considerable period of her existence, her life in many
instances is one of intolerable misery. There is generally
little or no consideration for a girl under the best
of circumstances until she becomes the mother of a male
child; her condition then improves but she approaches
happiness only when she in turn occupies the enviable
position of mother-in-law.

It is difficult to imagine a life of greater dreariness
and vacuity than that of the average Chinese woman.
Owing to her bound feet and resultant helplessness, if
she is not obliged to work she rarely stirs from the narrow
confinement of her courtyard, and perhaps in her
entire life she may not go a mile from the house to
which she was brought a bride, except for the periodical
visits to her father’s home.

It has been aptly said that there are no real homes in
China and it is not surprising that, ignored and despised
for centuries, the Chinese woman shows no ability to
improve the squalor of her surroundings. She passes
her life in a dark, smoke-filled dwelling with broken
furniture and a mud floor, together with pigs, chickens
and babies enjoying a limited sphere of action under the
tables and chairs, or in the tumble-down courtyard without.
Her work is actually never done and a Chinese
bride, bright and attractive at twenty, will be old and
faded at thirty.

But without doubt the crowning evil which attends
woman’s condition in China is foot binding, and nothing
can be offered in extenuation of this abominable custom.
It is said to have originated one thousand years
before the Christian era and has persisted until the present
day in spite of the efforts directed against it. The
– 70 –
Empress Dowager issued edicts strongly advising its
discontinuation, the “Natural Foot Society,” which was
formed about fifteen years ago, has endeavored to educate
public opinion, and the missionaries refuse to admit
girls so mutilated to their schools; but nevertheless the
reform has made little progress beyond the coast cities.
“Precedent” and the fear of not obtaining suitable husbands
for their daughters are responsible for the continuation
of the evil, and it is estimated that there are
still about seventy-four millions of girls and women who
are crippled in this way.

The feet are bandaged between the ages of five and
seven. The toes are bent under the sole of the foot
and after two or three years the heel and instep are so
forced together that a dollar can be placed in the cleft;
gradually also the lower limbs shrink away until only
the bones remain.

The suffering of the children is intense. We often
passed through streets full of laughing boys and tiny
girls where others, a few years older, were sitting on the
doorsteps or curbstones holding their tortured feet and
crying bitterly. In some instances out-houses are constructed
a considerable distance from the family dwelling
where the girls must sleep during their first crippled
years in order that their moans may not disturb the
other members of the family. The child’s only relief
is to hang her feet over the edge of the bed in order to
stop the circulation and induce numbness, or to seek
oblivion from opium.

If the custom were a fad which affected only the
wealthy classes it would be reprehensible enough, but
it curses rich and poor alike, and almost every day we
saw heavily laden coolie women steadying themselves
by means of a staff, hobbling stiff-kneed along the roads
or laboring in the fields.

A Chinese Mother with Her Children

Chinese Women of the Coolie Class
with Bound Feet

– 71 –

Although the agitation against foot binding is undoubtedly
making itself felt to a certain extent in the
coast provinces, in Yün-nan the horrible practice continues
unabated. During the year in which we traveled
through a large part of the province, wherever there
were Chinese we saw bound feet. And the fact that
virtually every girl over eight years old was mutilated in
this way is satisfactory evidence that reform ideas have
not penetrated to this remote part of the Republic.

I know of nothing which so rouses one’s indignation
because of its senselessness and brutality, and China can
never hope to take her place among civilized nations
until she has abandoned this barbarous custom and liberated
her women from their infamous subjection.

There has been much criticism of foreign education
because the girls who have had its advantages absorb
western ideas so completely that they dislike to return
to their homes where the ordinary conditions of a
Chinese household exist. Nevertheless, if the women of
China are ever to be emancipated it must come through
their own education as well as that of the men.

One of the first results of foreign influence is to delay
marriage, and in some instances the early betrothal with
its attendant miseries. The evil which results from this
custom can hardly be overestimated. It happens not
infrequently that two children are betrothed in infancy,
the respective families being in like circumstances at the
time. The opportunity perhaps is offered to the girl to
attend school and she may even go through college, but
an inexorable custom brings her back to her parents’
home, forces her to submit to the engagement made in
– 72 –
babyhood and perhaps ruins her life through marriage
with a man of no higher social status or intelligence than
a coolie.

Among the few girls imbued with western civilization
a spirit of revolt is slowly growing, and while it is impossible
for them to break down the barriers of ages, yet in
many instances they waive aside what would seem an unsurmountable
precedent and insist upon having some
voice in the choosing of their husbands.

While in Yen-ping we were invited to attend the semi-foreign
wedding of a girl who had been brought up in the
Woman’s School and who was qualified to be a “Bible
Woman” or native Christian teacher. It was whispered
that she had actually met her betrothed on several occasions,
but on their wedding day no trace of recognition
was visible, and the marriage was performed with all the
punctilious Chinese observances compatible with a Christian
ceremony.

Precedent required of this little bride, although she
might have been radiantly happy at heart, and undoubtedly
was, to appear tearful and shrinking and as she was
escorted up the aisle by her bridesmaid one might have
thought she was being led to slaughter. White is not becoming
to the Chinese and besides it is a sign of mourning,
so she had chosen pink for her wedding gown and
had a brilliant pink veil over her carefully oiled hair.

After the ceremony the bride and bridegroom proceeded
downstairs to the joyous strain of the wedding
march, but with nothing joyous in their demeanor—in
fact they appeared like two wooden images at the reception
and endured for over an hour the stares and loud
criticism of the guests. He assumed during the ordeal
a look of bored indifference while the little bride sat with
– 73 –
her head bowed on her breast, apparently terror stricken.
But once she raised her face and I saw a merry twinkle
in her shining black eyes that made me realize that perhaps
it wasn’t all quite so frightful as she would have us
believe. I often wonder what sort of a life she is leading
in her far away Chinese courtyard.

VOYAGING TO YÜN-NAN

We had a busy week in Hongkong outfitting for our
trip to Yün-nan. Hongkong is one of the best cities in
the Orient in which to purchase supplies of almost any
kind, for not only is the selection excellent, but the best
English goods can be had for prices very little in excess
of those in London itself.

The system which we used in our commissary was that
of the unit food box which has been adopted by most
large expeditions. The boxes were packed to weigh
seventy pounds each and contained all the necessary
staple supplies for three persons for one week; thus only
one box needed to be opened at a time, and, moreover, if
the party separated for a few days a single box could be
taken without the necessity of repacking and with the assurance
that sufficient food would be available.

Our supplies consisted largely of flour, butter, sugar,
coffee, milk, bacon, and marmalade, and but little tinned
meat, vegetables, or fruit because we were certain to be
able to obtain a plentiful supply of such food in the
country through which we were expecting to travel.

Our tents were brought from New York and were
made of light Egyptian cotton thoroughly waterproof,
but we also purchased in Hongkong a large army tent
for the servants and two canvas flies to protect loads and
specimens. We used sleeping bags and folding cots,
tables and chairs, for when an expedition expects to remain
– 75 –
in the field for a long time it is absolutely necessary
to be as comfortable as possible and to live well;
otherwise one cannot work at one’s highest efficiency.

For clothing we all wore khaki or “Dux-back” suits
with flannel shirts and high leather shoes for mountain
climbing, and we had light rubber automobile shirts and
rubber caps for use in rainy weather. The auto shirt is
a long, loose robe which slips over the head and fastens
about the neck and, when one is sitting upon a horse, can
be so spread about as to cover all exposed parts of the
body; it is especially useful and necessary, and hip
rubber boots are also very comfortable during the rainy
season.

Our traps for catching small mammals were
brought from New York. We had two sizes of wooden
“Out of Sight” for mice and rats, and four or five sizes
of Oneida steel traps for catching medium sized animals
such as civets and polecats. We also carried a half
dozen No. 5 wolf traps. Mr. Heller had used this size
in Africa and found that they were large enough even
to hold lions.

Mr. Heller carried a 250-300 Savage rifle, while I
used a 6½ mm. Mannlicher and a .405 Winchester. All
of these guns were eminently satisfactory, but the choice
of a rifle is a very personal matter and every sportsman
has his favorite weapon. We found, however, that a flat
trajectory high-power rifle such as those with which we
were armed was absolutely essential for many of our
shots were at long range and we frequently killed gorals
at three hundred yards or over.

The camera equipment consisted of two 3A Kodaks,
a Graphic 4 × 5 tripod camera, and Graflex 4 × 5 for
rapid work. We have found after considerable field
– 76 –
experience that the 4 × 5 is the most convenient size to
handle, for the plate is large enough and can be obtained
more readily than any other in different parts of the
world. The same applies to the 3A Kodak “post-card”
size film, for there are few places where foreign goods
are carried that 3A films cannot be purchased.

All of our plates and films were sealed in air-tight tin
boxes before we left America, and thus the material was
in perfect condition when the cans were opened. We
used plates almost altogether in the finer photographic
work, for although they are heavier and more difficult to
handle than films, nevertheless the results obtained are
very superior. A collapsible rubber dark room about
seven feet high and four feet in diameter was an indispensable
part of the camera equipment. This tent was
made for us by the Abercrombie & Fitch Company, of
New York, and could be hung from the limb of a tree or
the rafters of a building and be ready for use in five
minutes.

The motion pictures were taken with a Universal
camera, and like all other negatives were developed in
the field by means of a special apparatus which had been
designed by Mr. Carl Akeley of the American Museum
of Natural History. This work required a much larger
space than that of the portable dark room and we consequently
had a tent made of red cloth which could be tied
inside of our ordinary sleeping tent.

Our equipment was packed in fiber army trunks and
in wooden boxes with sliding tops. The latter arrangement
is especially desirable in Yün-nan, for the loads can
be opened without being untied from the saddle, thus
saving a considerable amount of time and trouble.

It was by no means an easy matter to get our supplies
– 77 –
together, but the Lane & Crawford Company of Hongkong
pushed the making and packing of our boxes in a
remarkably efficient manner; as the manager of one of
their departments expressed it, “the one way to hurry a
Chinaman is to get more Chinamen,” and they put a
small army at work upon our material, which was ready
for shipment in just a week.

While in Hongkong we were joined by Wu Hung-tao,
of Shanghai, who acted as interpreter and “head
boy” as well as a general field manager of the expedition.
He formerly had been in the employ of Mr. F. W. Cary,
when the latter was Commissioner of Customs in Teng-yueh,
Yün-nan, and he was educated at the Anglo-Chinese
College of Foochow. Wu proved to be the most
efficient and trustworthy servant whom we have ever
employed, and the success of our work was due in no
small degree to his efforts.

We left for Tonking on the S. S. Sung-kiang, commanded
by Harry Trowbridge, a congenial and well-read
gentleman whose delightful personality contributed
much toward making our week’s stay on his
ship most pleasant. On our way to Haiphong the
vessel stopped at the island of Hainan and anchored
about three miles off the town of Hoi-hau. This
island is 90 by 150 miles long, is mountainous in its center,
but flat and uninteresting at the northwest.

A large part of the island is unexplored and in the interior
there is a mountain called “the Five Fingers”
which has never been ascended, for it is reported that the
hill tribes are unfriendly and that the tropical valleys
are reeking with deadly malaria. The island undoubtedly
would prove to be a rich field for zoölogical work as
is shown by the collections which the American Museum
– 78 –
of Natural History has already received from a native
dealer; these include monkeys, squirrels, and other small
mammals, and bears, leopards, and deer are said to be
among its fauna.

The next night’s steaming brought us to the city of
Paik-hoi on the mainland. In the afternoon we went
ashore with Captain Trowbridge to visit Dr. Bradley of
the China Inland Mission who is in charge of a leper hospital,
which is a model of its kind. The doctor was away
but we made ourselves at home and when he returned he
found us in his drawing room comfortably enjoying afternoon
tea. He remarked that he knew of a Chinese
cook who was looking for a position, and half an hour
later, while we were watching some remarkably fine
tennis, the cook arrived. He was about six feet two
inches high, and so thin that he was immediately christened
the “Woolworth Building” and, although not a
very prepossessing looking individual he was forthwith
engaged, principally because of his ability to speak English.
This was at six o’clock in the afternoon and we had
to be aboard the ship at eight. The doctor sent a note to
the French Consul and the cook returned anon with his
baggage and passport. Obtaining this cook was the
only really rapid thing which I have ever seen done in
China!

When the Sung-kiang arrived in Haiphong the next
afternoon we were besieged by a screaming, fighting mob
of Annamits who seized upon our baggage like so many
vultures, and it was only by means of a few well-directed
kicks that we could prevent it from being scattered to
the four winds of Heaven. After we had designated a
sampan to receive our equipment the unloading began
and several trunks had gone over the side, when Mr.
– 79 –
Heller happened to glance down just in time to see one
of the ammunition boxes drop into the water and sink
like lead. The Annamits, believing that it had not been
noticed, went on as blithely as before and volubly denied
that anything had been lost. We stopped the unloading
instantly and sent for divers. The box had sunk in thirty
feet of muddy water and it seemed useless to hope that
it could ever be recovered, but the divers went to work
by dropping a heavy stone on the end of a rope and going
down it hand over hand.

After two hours the box was located and brought dripping
to the surface. Fortunately but little of the ammunition
was ruined, and most of it was dried during the
night in the engine room. Because of this delay we had
to leave Haiphong on the following day, and with Captain
Trowbridge, we went by train to Hanoi, the capital
of the colony.

Hanoi is a city of delightful surprises. It has broad,
clean streets, overhung with trees which often form a cool
green canopy overhead, beautiful lawns and well-kept
houses, and in the center of the town is a lovely lake
surrounded by a wide border of palms. At the far end,
like a jewel in a crystal setting, seems to float a white
pagoda, an outpost of the temple which stands in the
midst of a watery meadow of lotus plants. The city
shops are excellent, but in most instances the prices are
exceedingly high.

Like all the French towns in the Orient the hours for
work are rather confusing to the foreigner. The shops
open at 6:30 in the morning and close at 11 o’clock to reopen
again at 8 in the afternoon and continue business
until 7:30 or 8 o’clock in the evening. During the middle
of the day all houses have the shutters closely drawn,
– 80 –
and because of the intense heat and glare of the sun the
streets are absolutely deserted, not even a native being
visible. In the morning a petit déjeuner, remarkable especially
for its “petitness,” is served, and a real déjeuner
comes later anywhere from 10 to 12:30.

About 6 o’clock in the evening the open cafés and restaurants
along the sidewalk are lined with groups of
men and women playing cards and dice and drinking gin
and bitters, vermouth or absinthe. There is an air of
happiness and life about Hanoi which is typically Parisian
and even during war time it is a city of gayety. An
immense theater stands in the center of the town, but has
not been opened since the beginning of the war.

We had letters to M. Chemin Dupontès, the director
of the railroads, as well as to the Lieutenant-Governor
and other officials. Without exception we were received
in the most cordial manner and every facility and convenience
put at our disposal. M. Dupontès was especially helpful.

Some time before our arrival a tunnel on the railroad
from Hanoi to Yün-nan Fu had caved in and for almost
a month trains had not been running. It was now in operation,
however, but all luggage had to be transferred
by hand at the broken tunnel and consequently must not
exceed eighty-five pounds in weight. This meant repacking
our entire equipment and three days of hard
work. M. Dupontès arranged to have our 4000 pounds
of baggage put in a special third class carriage with our
“boys” in attendance and in this way saved the expedition
a considerable amount of money. He personally
went with us to the station to arrange for our comfort
with the chef de gare, telegraphed ahead at every station
– 81 –
upon the railroad, and gave us an open letter to all officials;
in fact there was nothing which he left undone.

The railroad is a remarkable engineering achievement
for it was constructed in great haste through a difficult
mountainous range. Yün-nan is an exceedingly rich
province and the French were quick to see the advantages
of drawing its vast trade to their own seaports.
The British were already making surveys to construct
a railroad from Bhamo on the headwaters of the Irawadi
River across Yün-nan to connect with the Yangtze, and
the French were anxious to have their road in operation
some time before the rival line could be completed.

Owing to its hasty construction and the heavy rainfall,
or perhaps to both, the tunnels and bridges frequently
cave in or are washed away and the railroad is
chiefly remarkable for the number of days in the year in
which it does not operate; nevertheless the French deserve
great credit for their enterprise in extending their
line to Yün-nan Fu over the mountains where there is a
tunnel or bridge almost every mile of the way. While it
was being built through the fever-stricken jungles of
Tonking the coolies died like flies, and it was necessary
to suspend all work during the summer months.

The scenery along the railroad is marvelous and the
traveling is by no means uncomfortable, but the hotels
in which one stops at night are wretched. One of our
friends in Hongkong related an amusing experience
which he had at Lao-kay, the first hotel on the railroad.
He asked for a bath and discovered that a tub of hot
water had been prepared. He wished a cold bath, and
seeing a large tank filled with cold water in the corner of
the room he climbed in and was enjoying himself when
the hotel proprietor suddenly rushed upstairs exclaiming,
– 82 –
“Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, you are in the tank of
drinking water.”

When we arrived at Yün-nan Fu we found a surprisingly
cosmopolitan community housed within its grim
old walls; some were consuls, some missionaries, some
salt, telegraph, or customs officials in the Chinese employ,
and others represented business firms in Hongkong,
but all received us with open-handed hospitality
characteristic of the East.

We thought that after leaving Hongkong our evening
clothes would not again be used, but they were requisitioned
every night for we were guests at dinners given
by almost everyone of the foreign community. Mr.
Howard Page, a representative of the Standard Oil
Company, proved a most valuable friend, and through
him we were able to obtain a caravan and make other arrangements
for the transportation of our baggage. M.
Henry Wilden, the French Consul, an ardent sportsman
and a charming gentleman, took an active interest in our
affairs and arranged a meeting for us with the Chinese
Commissioner of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, he later
transported our trunks to Hongkong with his personal
baggage and assisted us in every possible way.

We went to the Foreign Office at half past ten and
were ushered into a large room where a rather imposing
lunch had already been spread. The Commissioner, a
fat, jolly little man, who knew a few words of French
but none of English, received us in the most cordial way
and immediately opened several bottles of champagne in
our honor. He asked why our passports had not been
viséd in Peking, and we pleased him greatly by replying
that at the time we were in the capital Yün-nan was an
independent province and consequently the Peking Government
– 83 –
had not the temerity to put their stamp upon
our passports.

Inasmuch as Yün-nan was infested with brigands we
had expected some opposition to our plans for traveling
in the interior, but none was forthcoming, and with the
exception of an offer of a guard of soldiers for our trip
to Ta-li Fu which we knew it would be impolitic to refuse,
we left the Foreign Office with all the desired
permits.

The Chinese Government appeared to be greatly interested
in our zoölogical study of Yün-nan, offered to
assist us in every way we could suggest, and telegraphed
to every mandarin in the north and west of the province,
instructing them to receive us with all honor and to facilitate
our work in every way. None of the opposition
which we had been led to expect developed, and it is difficult
to see how we could have been more cordially received.

ON THE ROAD TO TA-LI FU

On August 6, we dispatched half our equipment to
Ta-li Fu, and three days later we ourselves left Yün-nan
Fu at eleven o’clock in the morning after an interminable
wait for our caravan. Through the kindness
of Mr. Page, a house boat was put at our disposal and
we sailed across the upper end of the beautiful lake
which lies just outside the city, and intercepted the caravan
twenty-five li[1] from Yün-nan Fu.

On the way we passed a number of cormorant fishers,
each with ten or a dozen birds sitting quietly upon the
boat with outspread wings drying their feathers. Every
bird has a ring about its neck, and is thus prevented
from swallowing the fish which it catches by diving into
the water.

After waiting an hour for our caravan we saw the
long train of mules and horses winding up the hill
toward us. There were seventeen altogether, and in
the midst of them rode the cook clinging desperately
with both hands to a diminutive mule, his long legs
dangling and a look of utter wretchedness upon his
face. Just before the caravan reached us it began to
rain, and the cook laboriously pulled on a suit of yellow
oilskins which we had purchased for him in Yün-nan
Fu. These, together with a huge yellow hat, completed
a picture which made us roar with laughter;
Heller gave the caption for it when he shouted, “Here
comes the ‘Yellow Peril.'”

Cormorant Fishers on the Lake at Yün-nan Fu

Our Camp at Chou Chou on the Way to Ta-li Fu

– 85 –

We surveyed the tiny horses with dismay. As Heller
vainly tried to get his girth tight enough to keep the
saddle from sliding over the animal’s tail he exclaimed,
“Is this a horse or a squirrel I’m trying to ride?” But
it was not so bad when we finally climbed aboard and
found that we did not crush the little brutes.

A seventy-pound box on each side of the saddle with
a few odds and ends on top made a pack of at least
one hundred and sixty pounds. This is heavy even for
a large animal and for these tiny mules seemed an impossibility,
but it is the usual weight, and the business-like
way in which they moved off showed that they
were not overloaded.

The Yün-nan pack saddle is a remarkably ingenious
arrangement. The load is strapped with a rawhide to
a double A-shaped frame which fits loosely over a second
saddle on the animal’s back and is held in place
by its own weight. If a mule falls the pack comes off
and, moreover, it can be easily removed if the road is
bad or whenever a stop is made. It has the great disadvantage,
however, of giving the horses serious back
sores which receive but scanty attention from the mafus
(muleteers).

When we were fairly started upon our long ride to
Ta-li Fu the time slipped by in a succession of delightful
days. Since this was the main caravan route the
mafus had regular stages beyond which they would not
go. If we did not stop for luncheon the march could
be ended early in the afternoon and we could settle
ourselves for the night in a temple which always proved
– 86 –
a veritable “haven of rest” after a long day in the saddle.
A few pages from my wife’s “Journal” of September
fifteenth describes our camp at Lu-ho-we and
our life on the road to Ta-li Fu.

For centuries this road has been one of the main
trade arteries through the province, and with the total
lack of conservation ideas so characteristic of the Chinese,
every available bit of natural forest has been cut
away. As a result the mountains are desert wastes of
sandstone alternating with grass-covered hills sometimes
clothed with groves of pines or spruces. These trees
have all been planted, and ere they have reached a
height of fifteen or twenty feet will yield to the insistent
demand for wood which is ever present with
the Chinese.

The ignorance of the need of forest conservation
is an illuminating commentary on Chinese education.
– 89 –
Mr. William Hanna, a missionary of Ta-li Fu,
told us that one day he was riding over this same road
with a Chinese gentleman, a deep scholar, who was
considered one of the best educated men of the province.
Pointing to the barren hills washed clean of soil
and deeply worn by countless floods, Mr. Hanna remarked
that all this could have been prevented, and
that instead of a rocky waste there might have been
a fertile hillside, had the trees been left to grow.

The Chinese scholar listened in amazement to facts
which every western schoolboy has learned ere he is
twelve years old, but of which he was ignorant because
they are not a part of Confucius’ teachings. To study
modern science is considered a waste of time by the orthodox
Chinese for “everything good must be old,” and
all his life he delves into the past utterly neglectful of
the present.

Every valley along the road was green with rice fields
and this, together with the deforestation of the mountains,
is responsible for the almost total lack of animal
life. Night after night we set traps about our temple
camps only to find them untouched in the morning.
There were no mammals with the exception of a few
red-bellied squirrels (Callosciurus erythræus subsp.)
and now and then a tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis).

The latter is an interesting species. Although it is
an Insectivore, and a relative of the tiny shrews which
live in holes and under logs, it has squirrel-like habits
and in appearance is like a squirrel to which it is totally
unrelated. Instead of the thinly haired mouselike
tails of the ordinary shrews the tupaias have developed
long bushy tails and in fact look and act so much like
– 90 –
squirrels that it is difficult to convince the white residents
of Yün-nan, who are accustomed to see them run
about the hedges and walls of their courtyards that the
two are quite unrelated.

The tree shrews are found only in Asia and are one
of the most remarkable instances of a superficial resemblance
between unrelated animals with similar habits.
A study of their anatomy has revealed the fact that
they represent a distinct group which is connected with
the monkeys (lemurs).

Although birds were fairly abundant the species were
not varied. We were about a month too early for the
ducks and geese, which during the winter swarm into
Yün-nan from the north, and without a dog, pheasants
are difficult to get. In fact we were greatly disappointed
in the game birds, for we had expected good
pheasant shooting even along the road and virtually
none were to be found.

The main caravan roads of Yün-nan held little of
interest for us as naturalists, but as students of native
customs they were fascinating, for the life of the province
passed before us in panoramic completeness. Chinese
villages wherever we have seen them are marvels
of utter and abandoned filth and although those of Yün-nan
are no exception to the rule, they are considerably
better than the coast cities.

Pigs, chickens, horses and cows live in happy communion
with the human inmates of the houses, the pigs
especially being treated as we favor dogs at home. On
the door steps children play with the swine, patting and
pounding them, and one of my friends said that he
had actually seen a mother bring her baby to be nursed
by a sow with her family of piglets.

– 91 –

The natives were pleasant and friendly and seemed
to be industrious. Wherever the deforestation had left
sufficient soil on the lower hillsides patches of corn
took the place of the former poppy fields for opium.
In 1906, the Empress Dowager issued an edict prohibiting
the growing of opium, and gave guarantees
to the British that it would be entirely stamped out
during the next ten years. Strangely enough these
promises have been faithfully kept, and in Yün-nan
the hillsides, which were once white with poppy blossoms,
are now yellow with corn. In all our 2000 miles
of riding over unfrequented trails and in the most out-of-the-way
spots we found only one instance where
opium was being cultivated.

The mandarin of each district accompanied by a
guard of soldiers makes periodical excursions during the
seasons when the poppy is in blossom, cuts down the
plants if any are found, and punishes the owners. China
deserves the greatest credit for so successfully dealing
with a question which affects such a large part of her
four hundred millions of people and which presents
such unusual difficulties because of its economic importance.

Just across the frontier in Burma, opium is grown
freely and much is smuggled into Yün-nan. Therefore
its use has by no means been abandoned, especially in
the south of the province, and in some towns it is
smoked openly in the tea houses. In August, 1916, just
before we reached Yün-nan Fu there was an exposé
of opium smuggling which throws an illuminating side
light on the corruption of some Chinese officials.

Opium can be purchased in Yün-nan Fu for two
dollars (Mexican) an ounce, while in Shanghai it is
– 92 –
worth ten dollars (Mexican). Tang (the Military Governor),
the Minister of Justice, the Governor’s brother
and three members of Parliament had collected six hundred
pounds of opium which they undertook to transfer
to Shanghai.

Their request that no examination of their baggage
be made by the French during their passage through
Tonking was granted, and a similar favor was procured
for them at Shanghai. Thus the sixty cases were safely
landed, but a few hours later, through the opium
combine, foreign detectives learned of the smuggling
and the boxes were seized.

The Minister of Justice denied all knowledge of the
opium, as did the three Parliament members, and Governor
Tang was not interrogated as that would be quite
contrary to the laws of Chinese etiquette; however, he
will not receive reappointment when his official term
expires.

As we neared Ta-li Fu, and indeed along the entire
road, we were amazed at the prevalence of goitre. At a
conservative estimate two out of every five persons were
suffering from the disease, some having two, or even
three, globules of uneven size hanging from their throats.
In one village six out of seven adults were affected, but
apparently children under twelve or fourteen years are
free from it as we saw no evidences in either sex. Probably
the disease is in a large measure due to the drinking
water, for it is most prevalent in the limestone regions
and seems to be somewhat localized.

Every day we passed “chairs,” or as we named them,
“mountain schooners,” in each of which a fat Chinaman
sprawled while two or four sweating coolies bore him up
hill. The chair is rigged between a pair of long bamboo
– 93 –
poles and consists of two sticks swung by ropes on which
is piled a heap of bedding. Overhead a light bamboo
frame supports a piece of yellow oil-cloth, which completely
shuts in the occupant, except from the front and
rear.

The Chinese consider it undignified to walk, or even
to ride, and if one is about to make an official visit nothing
less than a four-man chair is required. Haste is just
as much tabooed in the “front families” as physical exertion,
and is utterly incomprehensible to the Chinese.
Major Davies says that while he was in Tonking before
the railroad to Yün-nan Fu had been constructed, M.
Doumer, the Governor-General of French Indo-China,
who was a very energetic man, rode to Yün-nan Fu in an
extraordinarily short time. While the Europeans greatly
admired his feat, the Chinese believed he must be in some
difficulty from which only the immediate assistance of
the Viceroy of Yün-nan could extricate him.

In Yün-nan it is necessary to carry one’s own bedding
for the inns supply nothing but food, and consequently
when a Chinaman rides from one city to another he piles
a great heap of blankets on his horse’s back and climbs on
top with his legs astride the animal’s neck in front. The
horses are trained to a rapid trot instead of a gallop, and
I know of no more ridiculous sight than a Chinaman
bouncing along a road on the summit of a veritable
mountain of bedding with his arms waving and streamers
flying in every direction. He is assisted in keeping
his balance by broad brass stirrups in which he usually
hooks his heels and guides his horse by means of a rawhide
bridle decorated with dozens of bangles which make
a comforting jingle whenever he moves.

On the sixth day out when approaching the city of
– 94 –
Chu-hsuing Fu we took a short cut through the fields
leaving the caravan to follow the main road. The trail
brought us to a river about forty feet wide spanned by a
bridge made from two narrow planks, with a wide
median fissure. We led our horses across without trouble
and Heller started to follow. He had reached the center
of the bridge when his horse shied at the hole, jumped
to one side, hung suspended on his belly for a moment,
and toppled off into the water.

The performance had all happened behind Heller’s
back and when he turned about in time to see his horse
diving into the river, he stood looking down at him with
a most ludicrous expression of surprise and disgust,
while the animal climbed out and began to graze as
quietly as though nothing had happened.

Chu-hsuing was interesting as being the home of Miss
Cordelia Morgan, a niece of Senator Morgan of Virginia.
We found her to be a most charming and determined
young woman who had established a mission
station in the city under considerable difficulties. The
mandarin and other officials by no means wished to
have a foreign lady, alone and unattended, settle down
among them and become a responsibility which might
cause them endless trouble, and although she had rented
a house before she arrived, the owner refused to allow
her to move in.

She could get no assistance from the mandarin and
was forced to live for two months in a dirty Chinese inn,
swarming with vermin, until they realized that she was
determined not to be driven away. She eventually obtained
a house and while she considers herself comfortable,
I doubt if others would care to share her life
– 95 –
unless they had an equal amount of determination and enthusiasm.

At that time she had not placed her work under the
charge of a mission board and was carrying it on independently.
Until our arrival she had seen but one white
person in a year and a half, was living entirely upon
Chinese food, and had tasted no butter or milk in months.

We had a delightful dinner with Miss Morgan and the
next morning as our caravan wound down the long hill
past her house she stood at the window to wave good-by.
She kept her head behind the curtains, and doubtless if
we could have seen her face we would have found tears
upon it, for the evening with another woman of her kind
had brought to her a breath of the old life which she had
resolutely forsaken and which so seldom penetrated to
her self-appointed exile.

On our ninth day from Yün-nan Fu we had a welcome
bit of excitement. We were climbing a long mountain
trail to a pass over eight thousand feet high and were
near the summit when a boy dashed breathlessly up to
the caravan, jabbering wildly in Chinese. It required
fifteen minutes of questioning before we finally learned
that bandits had attacked a big caravan less than a mile
ahead of us and were even then ransacking the loads.

He said that there were two hundred and fifty of them
and that they had killed two mafus; almost immediately
a second gesticulating Chinaman appeared and gave the
number as three hundred and fifty and the dead as five.
Allowing for the universal habit of exaggeration we felt
quite sure that there were not more than fifty, and subsequently
learned that forty was the correct number and
that no one had been killed.

Our caravan was in a bad place to resist an attack but
– 96 –
we got out our rifles and made for a village at the top of
the pass. There were not more than a half dozen mud
houses and in the narrow street between them perfect
bedlam reigned. Several small caravans had halted to
wait for us, and men, horses, loads, and chairs were
packed and jammed together so tightly that it seemed
impossible ever to extricate them. Our arrival added to
the confusion, but leaving the mafus to scream and chatter
among themselves, we scouted ahead to learn the true
condition of affairs.

Almost within sight we found the caravan which had
been robbed. Paper and cloth were strewn about, loads
overturned, and loose mules wandered over the hillside.
The frightened mafus were straggling back and told us
that about forty bandits had suddenly surrounded the
caravan, shooting and brandishing long knives. Instantly
the mafus had run for their lives leaving the
brigands to rifle the packs unmolested. The goods
chiefly belonged to the retiring mandarin of Li-chiang,
and included some five thousand dollars worth of jade
and gold dust, all of which was taken.

Yün-nan, like most of the outlying provinces of China,
is infested with brigands who make traveling very unsafe.
There are, of course, organized bands of robbers
at all times, but these have been greatly augmented
since the rebellion by dismissed soldiers or deserters who
have taken to brigandage as the easiest means to avoid
starvation.

The Chinese Government is totally unable to cope with
the situation and makes only half-hearted attempts to
punish even the most flagrant robberies, so that unguarded
caravans carrying valuable material which
arrive at their destination unmolested consider themselves
very lucky.

The Pagoda at Ta-li Fu

The Dead of China

– 97 –

So far as our expedition was concerned we did not feel
great apprehension for it was generally known that we
carried but little money and our equipment, except for
guns, could not readily be disposed of. Throughout the
entire expedition we paid our mafus and servants a part
of their wages in advance when they were engaged, and
arranged to have money sent by the mandarins or the
British American Tobacco Co., to some large town which
would be reached after several months. There the balance
on salaries was paid and we carried with us only
enough money for our daily needs.

Before we left Yün-nan Fu we were assured by the
Foreign Office that we would be furnished with a guard
of soldiers—an honor few foreigners escape! The first
day out we had four, all armed with umbrellas! These
accompanied us to the first camp where they delivered
their official message to the yamen and intrusted us to
the care of others for our next day’s journey.

Sometimes they were equipped with guns of the vintage
of 1872, but their cartridges were seldom of the’
same caliber as the rifles and in most cases the ubiquitous
umbrella was their only weapon. Just what good
they would be in a real attack it is difficult to imagine,
except to divert attention by breaking the speed limits
in running away.

Several times in the morning we believed we had escaped
them but they always turned up in an hour or two.
They were not so much a nuisance as an expense, for
custom requires that each be paid twenty cents (Mexican)
a day both going and returning. They are of some
use in lending an official aspect to an expedition and in
– 98 –
requisitioning anything which may be needed; also they
act as an insurance policy, for if a caravan is robbed
a claim can be entered against the government, whereas
if the escort is refused the traveler has no redress.

It is amusing and often irritating to see the cavalier
way in which these men treat other caravans or the peasants
along the road. Waving their arms and shouting
oaths they shoe horses, mules or chairs out of the way regardless
of the confusion into which the approaching
caravan may be thrown. They must also be closely
watched for they are none too honest and are prone to
rely upon the moral support of foreigners to take whatever
they wish without the formality of payment.

We were especially careful to respect the property on
which we camped and to be just in all our dealings with
the natives, but it was sometimes difficult to prevent the
mafus or soldiers from tearing down fences for firewood
or committing similar depredations. Wherever such acts
were discovered we made suitable payment and punished
the offenders by deducting a part of their wages. Foreigners
cannot respect too carefully the rights of the
peasants, for upon their conduct rests the reception
which will be accorded to all others who follow in their
footsteps.

TA-LI FU

On Friday, September 28, we were at Chou Chou and
camped in a picturesque little temple on the outskirts
of the town. As the last stage was only six hours we
spent half the morning in taking moving pictures of the
caravan and left for Ta-li at eleven-thirty after an early
tiffin.

About two o’clock in the afternoon we reached Hsia-kuan,
a large commercial town at the lower end of the
lake. Its population largely consists of merchants and
it is by all means the most important business place of interior
Yün-nan; Ta-li, eight miles away, is the residence
and official city.

At Hsia-kuan we called upon the salt commissioner,
Mr. Lui, to whom Mr. Bode, the salt inspector at Yün-nan
Fu, had very kindly telegraphed money for my account,
and after the usual tea and cigarettes we went oil
to Ta-li Fu over a perfectly level paved road, which was
so slippery that it was well-nigh impossible for either
horse or man to move over it faster than a walk.

This was the hottest day of our experience in Northern
Yün-nan, the thermometer registering 85°+ in the
shade, which is the usual mid-summer temperature, but
the moment the sun dropped behind the mountains it
was cool enough for one to enjoy a fire. Even in the
winter it is never very cold and its delightful summer
should make Northern Yün-nan a wonderful health
– 100 –
resort for the residents of fever-stricken Burma and
Tonking.

We rode toward Ta-li with the beautiful lake on our
right hand and on the other the Ts’ang Shan mountains
which rise to a height of fourteen thousand feet.
As we approached the city we could see dimly outlined
against the foothills the slender shafts of three ancient
pagodas. They were erected to the feng-shui, the spirits
of the “earth, wind, and water,” and for fifteen hundred
years have stood guard over the stone graves which,
in countless thousands, are spread along the foot of
the mountains like a vast gray blanket. In the late afternoon
sunlight the walls of the city seemed to recede
before us and the picturesque gate loomed shadowy and
unreal even when we passed through its gloomy arch
and clattered up the stone-paved street.

We soon discovered the residence of Mr. H. G. Evans,
agent of the British American Tobacco Company, to
whose care our first caravan had been consigned, and he
very hospitably invited us to remain with him while we
were in Ta-li Fu. This was only the beginning of Mr.
Evans’ assistance to the Expedition, for he acted as its
banker throughout our stay in Yün-nan, cashing checks
and transferring money for us whenever we needed
funds.

The British American Tobacco Company and the
Standard Oil Company of New York are veritable
“oases in the desert” for travelers because their agencies
are found in the most out-of-the-way spots in Asia
and their employees are always ready to extend the cordial
hospitality of the East to wandering foreigners.

Besides Mr. Evans the white residents of Ta-li Fu include
the Reverend William J. Hanna, his wife and two
– 101 –
other ladies, all of the China Inland Mission. Mr.
Hanna is doing a really splendid work, especially along
educational and medical lines. He has built a beautiful
little chapel, a large school, and a dispensary in connection
with his house, where he and his wife are occupied
every morning treating the minor ills of the natives,
Christian and heathen alike.

Ta-li Fu was the scene of tremendous slaughter at
the time of the Mohammedan war, when the Chinese
captured the city through the treachery of its commander
and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The
Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the
ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese
devastation.

The mandarin at Ta-li Fu was good-natured but dissipated
and corrupt. He called upon us the evening of
our arrival and almost immediately asked if we had any
shotgun cartridges. He remarked that he had a gun
but no shells, and as we did not offer to give him any
he continued to hint broadly at every opportunity.

The mandarins of lower rank often buy their posts
and depend upon what they can make in “squeeze”
from the natives of their district for reimbursement and
a profit on their investment. In almost every case
which is brought to them for adjustment the decision
is withheld until the magistrate has learned which of
the parties is prepared to offer the highest price for a
settlement in his favor. The Chinese peasant, accepting
this as the established custom, pays the bribe without
a murmur if it is not too exorbitant and, in fact, would
be exceedingly surprised if “justice” were dispensed in
any other way.

My personal relations with the various mandarins
– 102 –
whom I was constantly required to visit officially were
always of the pleasantest and I was treated with
great courtesy. It was apparent wherever we were
in China that there was a total lack of antiforeign feeling
in both the peasant and official classes and except
for the brigands, who are beyond the law, undoubtedly
white men can travel in perfect safety anywhere in the
republic. Before my first official visit Wu gave me a
lesson in etiquette. The Chinese are exceedingly punctilious
and it is necessary to conform to their standards
of politeness for they do not realize, or accept in excuse,
the fact that Western customs differ from their
own.

At the end of the reception room in every yamen
is a raised platform on which the visitor sits at the left
hand of the mandarin; it would be exceedingly rude for
a magistrate to seat the caller on his right hand. Tea is
always served immediately but is not supposed to be
tasted until the official does so himself; the cup must then
be lifted to the lips with both hands. Usually when the
magistrate sips his tea it is a sign that the interview is
ended. When leaving, the mandarin follows his visitor
to the doorway of the outer court, while the latter continually
bows and protests asking him not to come so
far.

Ta-li Fu and Hsia-kuan are important fur markets
and we spent some time investigating the shops. One
important find was the panda (Ælurus fulgens). The
panda is an aberrant member of the raccoon family but
looks rather like a fox; in fact the Chinese call it the
“fire fox” because of its beautiful, red fur. Pandas were
supposed to be exceedingly rare and we could hardly
believe it possible when we saw dozens of coats made
from their skins hanging in the fur shops.

The Residence of Rev. William J. Hanna at Ta-li Fu

The Gate and Main Street of Ta-li Fu

– 103 –

Skins of the huge red-brown flying squirrel, Petaurista
yunnanensis, were also used for clothing and the
abundance of this animal was almost as great a surprise
as the finding of the pandas. This is often true in the
case of supposedly rare species. A few specimens may
be obtained from the extreme limits of its range, or
from a locality where it really is rare, and for years
it may be almost unique in museum collections but eventually
the proper locality may be visited and the animals
found to be abundant.

We saw several skins of the beautiful cat (Felis
temmincki) which, with the snow leopard (Felis uncia), it
was said came from Tibet. Civets, bears, foxes, and
small cats were being used extensively for furs and pangolins
could be purchased in the medicine shops. The
scales of the pangolin are considered to be of great
value in the treatment of certain diseases and the skins
are usually sold by the pound as are the horns of deer,
wapiti, gorals, and serows.

Almost all of the fossil animals which have been obtained
in China by foreigners have been purchased in
apothecary shops. If a Chinaman discovers a fossil bed
he guards it zealously for it represents an actual gold
mine to him. The bones are ground into a fine powder,
mixed with an acid, and a phosphate obtained which in
reality has a certain value as a tonic. When a considerable
amount of faith and Chinese superstition is added
its efficacy assumes double proportions.

Every year a few tiger skins find their way to Hsia-kuan
from the southern part of the province along the
Tonking border, but the good ones are quickly sold at
– 104 –
prices varying from twenty-five to fifty dollars (Mexican).
Ten dollars is the usual price for leopard skins.

Marco Polo visited Ta-li Fu in the thirteenth century
and, among other things, he speaks of the fine horses
from this part of the province. We were surprised to
find that the animals are considerably larger and more
heavily built than those of Yün-nan Fu and appear to
be better in every way. A good riding horse can be
purchased for seventy-five dollars (Mexican) but mules
are worth about one hundred and fifty dollars because
they are considered better pack animals.

On the advice of men who had traveled much in the
interior of Yün-nan we hired our caravan and riding animals
instead of buying them outright, and subsequent
experience showed the wisdom of this course. Saddle
ponies, which are used only for short trips about the city,
cannot endure continual traveling over the execrable
roads of the interior where often it is impossible to feed
them properly. If an entire caravan were purchased
the leader of the expedition would have unceasing trouble
with the mafus to insure even ordinary care of the
animals, an opportunity would be given for endless
“squeeze” in the purchase of food, and there are other
reasons too numerous to mention why in this province
the plan is impracticable.

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
– 105 –
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 Yün-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
– 106 –
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
Yün-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.

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 coarse 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
– 108 –
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.

One of the Pagodas at Ta-li Fu

– 109 –

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
– 110 –
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
– 111 –
of northern Yün-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
– 112 –
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.

A Moso Herder

A Moso Woman

– 113 –

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 Yün-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 Yün-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.

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 Yün-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
– 115 –
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
Yün-nan used them for food.

On our first day in the temple Heller went up the
Snow Mountain for a reconnaissance and the party secured
a fine porcupine. It is quite a different animal
– 116 –
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 horse-back
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.

The Snow Mountain

– 117 –

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.

– 118 –

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.

A Cheek Gun Used by One of Our Hunters

The First Goral Killed on the Snow Mountain

– 119 –

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 camp-fire
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.

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.

Hotenfa, One of Our Moso Hunters,
Bringing in a Goral

Another Moso Hunter with a Porcupine

– 121 –

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.

– 122 –

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
– 123 –
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 Yün-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
– 124 –
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 cañon 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
– 125 –
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.

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
– 127 –
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.

– 128 –

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 cañon 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
cañon. 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
– 129 –
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 cañon 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 .808
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
– 130 –
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 dumbfounded 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
– 131 –
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 cañon 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
– 132 –
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.

A Typical Goral Cliff on the Snow Mountain

– 133 –

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.

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
– 135 –
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
– 136 –
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
mussing 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
– 137 –
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 Yün-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 Yün-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.”[2] They are great wanderers and over a very
large part of Yün-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 Yün-nan, where they
are in isolated villages, are being absorbed by the Chinese.
We found, as did Major Davies, that in some
– 138 –
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
Yün-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.

GORALS AND SEROWS

Gorals and serows belong to the subfamily Rupicaprinæ
which is an early mountain-living offshoot of the
Bovidæ; 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.

A Serow Killed on the Snow Mountain

The Head of a Serow

– 141 –

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 Yün-nan it is called “wild cow.”

The specific relationships of the serows are by no
means satisfactorily determined. Mr. Pocock, Superintendent
of the London Zoölogical 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 argyrochætes 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
– 142 –
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.

– 143 –

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 Yün-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
– 144 –
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 Zoölogical Garden; we saw a serow in the Zoölogical
Park at Calcutta and one from Darjeeling is
owned by the London Zoölogical 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 Næmorhedus 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,
– 145 –
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 Shweli 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,
– 146 –
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 mountain-side, 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
– 147 –
the mountain goat and as his remarks apply almost
equally well to the goral, I cannot do better than quote
them here:

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
– 148 –
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 Yün-nan, far above the
clouds, at the edge of the snow.

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 cañon 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
– 150 –
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
amherstiæ) 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 Yün-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
– 151 –
space where huge cauldrons 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
– 152 –
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 “White Water”

– 153 –

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 Yün-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
– 154 –
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
– 155 –
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.

– 156 –

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.

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.

– 158 –

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:

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.

– 161 –

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
– 162 –
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.

A Liso Hunter Carrying a Flying Squirrel

The Chief of Our Lolo Hunters

– 163 –

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.

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
Cañon 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.

The caravan wound along the edge of the gorge all
day and we were left far behind, for at each turn a
view more beautiful than the last opened out before
us, and until every color plate and negative in the
holders had been exposed we worked steadily with the
camera.

We were traveling northwestward through an unmapped
region which Baron Haendel-Mazzetti had
skirted and reported to be one of vast forests and probably
rich in game. After six hours of riding over almost
bare mountain-sides we passed through a parklike
spruce forest and reached Habala, a long thin village
of mud and stone houses scattered up the sides of
a narrow valley.

– 165 –

Above and to the left of the village rose ridge after
ridge of dense spruce forest overshadowed by a snow-crowned
peak and cut by deep ravines, the gloomy
depths of which yielded fascinating glimpses of rocky
cliffs—a veritable paradise for serow and goral. Our
camping place was a grassy lawn as flat and smooth as
the putting green of a golf course. Just below the
tents a streamlet of ice-cold water murmured comfortably
to itself and a huge dead tree was lying crushed
and broken for the camp fire.

The boys turned the beautiful spot into “home” in
half an hour and, after setting a line of traps, we wandered
slowly back through the darkness guided by the
brilliant flames of the fires which threw a warm yellow
glow over our little table spread for dinner.

We sent men to the village to bring in hunters and
after dinner four or five picturesque Mosos appeared.
They said that there were many serow, goral, muntjac
and some wapiti in the forests above the village, and
we could well believe it, for there was never a more
“likely looking” spot. Although the men did not claim
to be professional hunters, nevertheless they said that
they had good dogs and had killed many muntjac and
other animals.

They agreed to come at daylight and arrived about
two hours late, which was doing fairly well for natives.
It was a brilliant day just warm enough for comfort
in the sun and we left camp with high hopes. However
it did not take many hours to demonstrate that
the men knew almost nothing about hunting and that
their dogs were useless. Because of the dense cover
“still hunting” was out of the question and, after a
hard climb. We returned to camp to spend the remainder
– 166 –
of the afternoon developing photographs and preparing
small mammals.

Our traps had yielded three new shrews and a silver
mole as well as a number of mice, rats, and meadow
voles of species identical with those taken on the Snow
Mountain. It was evident, therefore, that the Yangtze
River does not act as an effective barrier to the distribution
of even the smallest forms and that the region
in which we were now working would not produce a
different fauna. This was an important discovery from
the standpoint of our distribution records but was also
somewhat disappointing.

The photographic work already had yielded excellent
results. The Paget color plates were especially
beautiful and the fact that everything was developed
in the field gave us an opportunity to check the quality
of each negative.

For this work the portable dark room was invaluable.
It could be quickly erected and suspended from
a tree branch or the rafters of a temple and offered an
absolutely safe place in which to develop or load plates.
The moving-picture film required special treatment because
of its size and we usually fastened in the servants’
tent the red lining which had been made for this
purpose in New York. Even then the space was so
cramped that we were dead tired at the end of a few
hours’ work.

One who sits comfortably in a theater or hall and
sees moving-picture film which has been obtained in
such remote parts of the world does not realize the
difficulties in its preparation. The water for developing
almost invariably was dirty and in order to insure
even a moderately clear film it always had to be strained.
– 167 –
For washing the negative pailful after pailful had to
be carried sometimes from a very long distance, and the
film exposed for hours to the carelessness or curiosity
of the natives. In our cramped quarters perhaps a corner
of the tent would be pushed open admitting a
stream of light; the electric flash lamp might refuse to
work, leaving us in complete darkness to finish the developing
“by guess and by gosh,” or any number of
other accidents occur to ruin the film. At most we
could not develop more than three hundred feet in an
afternoon and we never breathed freely until it finally
was dried and safely stored away in the tin cans.

We left Habala, on November 28, for a village called
Phete where the natives had assured us we would find
good hunters with dogs. For almost the entire distance
the road skirted the rim of the Yangtze gorge and
there the view of the great chasm was even more magnificent
than that we had left. While its sides are not
fantastically sculptured and the colors are softer than
those of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, nevertheless
its grandeur is hardly less imposing and awe-inspiring.
If Yün-nan is ever made accessible by railroads this
gorge should become a Mecca for tourists, for it is
without doubt one of the most remarkable natural sights
in the world.

About two o’clock in the afternoon we saw three
clusters of houses on a tableland which juts into a chasm
cut by a tributary of the great river. One of them was
Phete and it seemed that we would reach the village in
half an hour at least, but the road wound so tortuously
around the hillside, down to the stream and up again
that it was an hour and a half before we found a camping
– 168 –
place on a narrow terrace a short distance from the
nearest houses.

Next day we could not go to the village to find
hunters until mid-forenoon because the natives of this
region are very late risers and often have not yet opened
their doors at ten o’clock. This is quite contrary to the
custom in many other parts of China where the inhabitants
are about their work in the first light of dawn.

The hills above Phete are bare or thinly forested and
every available inch of level ground is under cultivation
with corn and a few rice paddys near the creek; the
latter were a great surprise, for we had not expected
to find rice so far north. The village itself was exceedingly
picturesque but never have we met people of such
utter and hopeless stupidity as its inhabitants. They
were pleasant enough and always greeted us with a
smile and salutation, but their brains seemed not to
have kept pace with their bodies and when asked the
simplest question they would only stare stupidly without
the slightest glimmering of intelligence.

It required an hour’s questioning of a dozen or more
people to glean that there were no hunters in the village
where they had lived all their lives, but Wu, our
interpreter, finally discovered a Chinese who told us of
a hunter in the mountains. He asked how far and the
answer was “Not very far.”

“Well, is it ten li!“

“I don’t know how many li.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Yes; it is only a few steps.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“About the time of one meal.”

We were not to be deceived, for we had had experience
– 169 –
with native ideas of distance, and we ate our tiffin
before starting out on the “few steps.” A steep trail
led up the valley and after three hours of steady riding
we reached the hunter’s village of three large houses on
a flat strip of cleared ground in the midst of a dense
forest.

The people looked much like those of Phete but were
rather anemic specimens, and five out of eight had enormous
goiters. They were exceedingly shy at first,
watching us with side glances and through cracks in the
wall. Wu learned that we were the first white persons
they had ever seen. I imagine that much of their unhealthiness
was due to too close intermarriage, for these
families had little intercourse with the people in Phete
who were only “a few steps” away.

As we were leaving they began to eat their supper
in the courtyard. The principal dish consisted of mixed
cornmeal and rice, boiled squash and green vegetables.
All the women were busy husking corn which was hung
to dry on great racks about the house. These racks
we had noticed in every village since leaving Li-chiang
and they seemed to be in universal use in the north.

The hunter had a flock of sheep and we purchased
one for $4.40 (Mexican) but there was considerable
difficulty in paying for it since these people had never
seen Chinese money even though living in China itself.
For currency they used chunks of silver the size of a
walnut and worth about one dollar (Mexican). The
Chinese guide finally persuaded the people of the genuineness
of our money and we purchased a few eggs
and a little very delicious wild honey besides the sheep.
These people as well as those of Phete spoke the Li-chiang
dialect but with such variation that even our
– 170 –
mafus could understand them only with the greatest
difficulty.

When we returned to camp we found that the coolie
who had been engaged to carry the motion-picture camera
and tripod had left without the formality of saying
“good-by” or asking for the money which was due him.
We had had considerable trouble with the camera
coolies since leaving Li-chiang. The first one carried
the camera to the Taku ferry with many groans, and
there engaged a huge Chinaman to take his place, for
he thought the load too heavy. It only weighed fifty
pounds, and in the Fukien Province where men seldom
carry less than eighty pounds and sometimes as much
as one hundred and fifty, it would have been considered
as only half a burden. In Yün-nan, however, animals
do most of the pack carrying, and coolies protest at
even an ordinary load.

We left Phete in the early morning and camped
about five hundred feet above the hunter’s cabin in a
beautiful little meadow. It was surrounded with splendid
pine trees, and a clear spring bubbled up from a
knoll in the center and spread fan-shaped in a dozen
little streams over the edge of a deep ravine where a
mountain torrent rushed through a tangled bamboo
jungle. The gigantic fallen trees were covered inches
deep with green moss, and altogether it was an ideal
spot for small mammals. Our traps, however, yielded
no new species, although we secured dozens of specimens
every night.

There were a few families of Lolos about two miles
away and these were engaged as hunters. They told
us that serow and muntjac were abundant and that
wapiti were sometimes found on the mountains several
– 171 –
miles to the northward. Although the men had a large
pack of good dogs they were such unsatisfactory hunters
that we gave up in disgust after three days. They
never would appear until ten or eleven o’clock in the
morning when the sun had so dried the leaves that the
scent was lost and the dogs could not follow a trail even
if one were found. Moreover, the camp was a very uncomfortable
one, due to the wind which roared through
the trees night and day.

We were rejoined here by Hotenfa, who had left us
at the Taku ferry to see if he could get together a pack
of dogs. He brought three hounds with him which he
praised exuberantly, but we subsequently found that
they did not justify our hopes. Nevertheless, we were
glad to have Hotenfa back, for he was one of the most
intelligent, faithful, and altogether charming natives
whom we met in all Yün-nan. He was an uncouth savage
when he first came to us, but in a very short time
he had learned our camp ways and was as good a servant
as any we had.

TRAVELING TOWARD TIBET

Since the hunters at the “Windy Camp” had proved
so worthless and the traps had yielded no small mammals
new to our collection, we decided to cross the
mountains toward the Chung-tien road which leads into
Tibet.

The head mafu explored the trail and reported that
it was impassable but, after an examination of some of
the worst barriers, we decided that they could be cleared
away and ordered the caravan to start at half past seven
in the morning.

Before long we found that the mafus were right.
The trail was a mass of tangled underbrush and fallen
logs and led straight up a precipitous mountain through
a veritable jungle of dwarf bamboo. It was necessary
to stop every few yards to lift the loads over a barrier
or cut a passage through the bamboo thickets, and had
it not been for the adjustable pack saddles we never
could have taken the caravan over the trail.

Late in the afternoon the exhausted men and animals
dragged themselves to the summit of the mountain, for
it was not a pass. In a few hours we had come from
autumn to mid-winter where the ground was frozen and
covered with snow. We were at an altitude of more
than 15,000 feet and far above all timber except the
rhododendron forest which spread itself out in a low
gray mass along the ridges. It was difficult to make
– 173 –
the slightest exertion in the thin air and a bitterly cold
wind swept across the peaks so that it was impossible
to keep warm even when wrapped in our heaviest coats.

The servants and mafus suffered considerably but it
was too late to go on and there was no alternative but
to spend the night on the mountain. As soon as the
tents were up the men huddled disconsolately about the
fire, but we started out with a bag of traps while Heller
went in the opposite direction. We expected to catch
some new mammals during the night, for there were
great numbers of runways on the bare hillsides. The
ground was frozen so solidly that it was necessary to
cut into the little Microtus tunnels with a hatchet in
order to set the traps and we were almost frozen before
the work was completed. The next morning we had
caught twenty specimens of a new white-bellied meadow
vole and a remarkable shrew with a long curved proboscis.

Everyone had spent an uncomfortable night, for it
was bitterly cold even in our sleeping bags and the men
had sat up about the fire in order to keep from freezing.
There was little difficulty in getting the caravan started
in the gray light of early dawn and after descending
abruptly four thousand feet on a precipitous trail to a
Lolo village strung out along a beautiful little valley
we were again in the pleasant warmth of late autumn.

The natives here had never before seen a white person
and in a few moments our tents were surrounded by
a crowd of strange-looking men and boys. The chief
of the village presented us with an enormous rooster
and we made him happy by returning two tins of cigarettes.
The Lolo women, the first we had seen, were
especially surprising because of their graceful figures
– 174 –
and handsome faces. Their flat turbans, short jackets,
and long skirts with huge flounces gave them a rather
old-fashioned aspect, quite out of harmony with the
metal neck-bands, earrings, and bracelets which they
all wore.

The men were exceedingly pleasant and made a picturesque
group in their gray and brown felt capes which
they gather about the neck by a draw string and, to
the Lolos and Mosos alike, are both bed and clothing.
We collected all the men for their photographs, and
although they had not the slightest idea what we were
about they stood quietly after Hotenfa had assured
them that the strange-looking instrument would not
go off. But most interesting of all was their astonishment
when half an hour later they saw the negative and
were able to identify themselves upon it.

The Lolos are apparently a much maligned race.
They are exceedingly independent, and although along
the frontier of their own territory in S’suchuan they
wage a war of robbery and destruction it is not wholly
unprovoked. No one can enter their country safely unless
he is under the protection of a chief who acts as a
sponsor and passes him along to others. Mr. Brooke,
an Englishman, was killed by the Lolos, but he was not
properly “chaperoned,” and Major D’Ollone of the
French expedition lived among them safely for some
time and gives them unstinted praise.

Whenever we met tribesmen in Yün-nan who had
not seen white persons they behaved much like all other
natives. They were, of course, always greatly astonished
to see our caravan descend upon them and were
invariably fascinated by our guns, tents, and in fact
everything about us, but were generally shy and decidedly
less offensive in their curiosity than the Chinese
of the larger inland towns to whom foreigners are by
no means unknown. As a matter of fact we have found
that our white skins, light eyes, and hair are a never
failing source of interest and envy to almost all Orientals.

A Lolo Village

Lolos Seeing Their Photographs for the First Time

– 175 –

Yvette usually excited the most curiosity, especially
among the women, and as she wore knickerbockers and
a flannel shirt there were times when the determination
of her sex seemed to call forth the liveliest discussion.
Her long hair, however, usually settled the matter, and
then the women had decided the question of gender
satisfactorily they often made timid, and most amusing,
advances. One woman said she greatly admired her
fair complexion and asked how many baths she took to
keep her skin so white. Another wondered whether it
was necessary to ever comb her hair and almost everyone
wished to feel her clothes and shoes. She always
would command more attention than anyone else by her
camera operations, and a group would stand in speechless
amazement to see her dodge in and out of the portable
dark room when she was developing photographs
or loading plates.

We made arrangements to go with a number of the
Lolos to a spot fifteen miles away on the Chung-tien
road to hunt wapiti (probably Cervus macneilli) which
the natives call maloo. Our American wapiti, or elk,
is a migrant from Asia by way of the Bering Strait and
is probably a relative of the wapiti which is found in
Central Asia, China, Manchuria and Korea.

At present these deer are abundant in but few places.
Throughout the Orient, and especially in China, the
growing horns when they are soft, or in the “velvet,”
– 176 –
are considered of great medicinal value and, during the
summer, the animals are trapped and hunted relentlessly
by the natives. In Yün-nan, when we were there,
a pair of horns were worth $100 (Mexican).

Thanksgiving morning dawned gray and raw with
occasional flurries of haillike snow, but we did not heed
the cold, for the trail led over two high ridges and along
the rim of a tremendous gorge. To the south the white
summits of the Snow Mountain range towered majestically
above the surrounding peaks and, in the gray
light, the colors were beautiful beyond description. To
the north we could see heavily wooded mountain slopes
interspersed with open parklike meadows—splendid
wapiti country.

Our tents were pitched two hundred yards from the
Chung-tien road just within the edge of a stately, moss-draped
forest. That night we celebrated with harmless
bombs from the huge fires of bamboo stalks which exploded
as they filled with steam and echoed among the
trees like pistol shots. Marco Polo speaks of the same
phenomenon which he first witnessed in this region over
six hundred and thirty years ago.

About nine o’clock in the evening we ran our traps
with a lantern and besides several mice (Apodemus)
found two rare shrews and a new mole (Blarina). I
went out with the hunters at dawn but saw nothing except
an old wapiti track and a little sign. All during
the following day a dense fog hung close to the ground
so that it was impossible to hunt, and, on the night of
December 2, it snowed heavily. The morning began
bright and clear but clouded about ten o’clock and became
so bitterly cold that the Lolos would not hunt.
They really suffered considerably and that night they
– 177 –
all left us to return to their homes. We were greatly
disappointed, for we had brilliant prospects of good
wapiti shooting but without either men or dogs and in
an unknown country there was little possibility of successful
still hunting.

The mafus were very much worried and refused to go
further north. They were certain that we would not be
able to cross the high passes which lay between us and
the Mekong valley far to the westward and complained
unceasingly about the freezing cold and the lack of food
for their animals. It was necessary to visit the Mekong
River, for even though it might not be a good big game
region it would give us a cross-section, as it were, of the
fauna and important data on the distribution of small
mammals. Therefore we decided to leave for the long
ride as soon as the weather permitted.

STALKING TIBETANS WITH A CAMERA

Y. B. A.

The road near which we were camped was one of the
great trade routes into Tibet and over it caravans were
continually passing laden with tea or pork. Many of
them had traveled the entire length of Yün-nan to
S’su-mao on the Tonking frontier where a special kind
of tea is grown, and were hurrying northward to cross
the snow-covered passes which form the gateways to
the “Forbidden Land.”

The caravans sometimes stopped for luncheon or to
spend the night near our camp. As the horses came up,
one by one the loads were lifted off, the animals turned
loose, and after their dinner of buttered tea and
tsamba[5] each man stretched out upon the ground
without shelter of any kind and heedless of the freezing
cold. It is truly the life of primitive man and has bred
a hardy, restless, independent race, content to wander
over the boundless steppes and demanding from the
outside world only to be let alone.

They are picturesque, wild-looking fellows, and in
their swinging walk there is a care-free independence
and an atmosphere of the bleak Tibetan steppes which
are strangely fascinating. Every Tibetan is a study
for an artist. He wears a fur cap and a long loose coat
– 179 –
like a Russian blouse thrown carelessly off one shoulder
and tied about the waist, blue or red trousers, and high
boots of felt or skin reaching almost to the knees. A
long sword, its hilt inlaid with bright-colored bits of
glass or stones, is half concealed beneath his coat, and
he is seldom without a gun or a murderous looking
spear.

In the breast of his loose coat, which acts as a pocket,
he carries a remarkable assortment of things; a pipe,
tobacco, tea, tsamba, cooking pots, a snuff box and,
hanging down in front, a metal charm to protect him
from bullets or sickness.

The eastern Tibetans are men of splendid physique
and great strength, and are frequently more than six
feet in height. They have brick-red complexions and
some are really handsome in a full-blooded masculine
way. Their straight features suggest a strong mixture
of other than Mongolian stock and they are the direct
antithesis of the Chinese in every particular. Their
strength and virility and the dashing swing of their
walk are very refreshing after contact with the ease-loving,
effeminate Chinaman whom one sees being carried
along the road sprawled in a mountain chair.

Of all natives whom we tried to photograph the
Tibetans were the most difficult. It was almost impossible
to bribe them with money or tin cans to stand for
a moment and when they saw the motion picture camera
set up beside the trail they would make long detours to
avoid passing in front of it.

What we could not get by bribery we tried to do by
stealth and concealed ourselves behind bushes with the
camera focused on a certain spot upon the road. The
instant a Tibetan discovered it he would run like a
– 180 –
frightened deer and in some mysterious way they seemed
to have passed the word along that our camp was a
spot to be avoided. Sometimes a bottle was too great
a temptation to be resisted, and one would stand timidly
like a bird with wings half spread, only to dash
away as though the devil were after him, when he saw
my head disappear beneath the focusing hood.

Wu and a mafu who could speak a little Tibetan
finally captured one picturesque looking fellow. He
carefully tucked the tin cans, given for advance payment,
inside his coat, and with a great show of bravery
allowed me to place him where I wished. But the instant
the motion picture camera swung in his direction
he dodged aside, and jumped behind it. Wu tried to
hold him but the Tibetan drew his sword, waved it
wildly about his head and took to his heels, yelling at
the top of his lungs. He was well-nigh frightened to
death and when he disappeared from sight at a curve in
the road he was still “going strong” with his coat tails
flapping like a sail in the wind.

One caravan came suddenly upon the motion picture
camera unawares. There were several women in the
party and, as soon as the men realized that there was
no escape, each one dodged behind a woman, keeping
her between him and the camera. They were taking no
chances with their precious selves, for the women could
be replaced easily enough if necessary.

The trouble is that the Tibetan not unnaturally has
the greatest possible suspicion and dislike for strangers.
The Chinese he loathes and despises, and foreigners he
knows only too well are symptoms of missionaries and
punitive expeditions or other disturbances of his immemorial
peace. He is confirmed in his attitude by the
Church which throughout Tibet has the monopoly of
all the gold in the country. And the Church utterly
declines to believe that any foreigner can come so far
for any end less foolish than the discovery of gold and
the infringing of the ecclesiastical monopoly.

Travelers in the Mekong Valley

Two Tibetans

– 181 –

Major Davies, who saw much of the Yün-nan Tibetans,
has remarked that it is curious how little impression
the civilization and customs of the Chinese have
produced on the Tibetans. Elsewhere, one of the principal
characteristics of Chinese expansion is its power
of absorbing other races, but with the Tibetans exactly
the reverse takes place. The Chinese become Tibetanized
and the children of a Chinaman married to a Tibetan
woman are usually brought up in the Tibetan customs.

Probably the great cause which keeps the Tibetan
from being absorbed is the cold, inhospitable nature of
his country. There is little to tempt the Chinese to emigrate
into Tibet and consequently they never are there
in sufficient numbers to influence the Tibetans around
them. A similar cause has preserved some of the low-lying
Shan states from absorption, the heat in this case
being the reason that the Chinese do not settle there.

WESTWARD TO THE MEKONG RIVER

During the night of December 4, there was a heavy
fall of snow and in the morning we awoke to find ourselves
in fairyland. We were living in a great white
palace, with ceiling and walls of filmy glittering webs.
The long, delicate strands of gray moss which draped
themselves from tree to tree and branch to branch were
each one converted into threads of crystal, forming a
filigree lacework, infinitely beautiful.

It was hard to break camp and leave that silver palace,
for every vista through the forest seemed more
lovely than the one before, but we knew that another
fall of snow would block the passes and shut us out from
the Mekong valley. The mafus even refused to try the
direct route across the mountains to Wei-hsi and insisted
on going southward to the Shih-ku ferry and up
the Yangtze River on the main caravan route.

It was a long trip and we looked forward with no
pleasure to eight days of hard riding. The difficulty
in obtaining hunters since leaving the Snow Mountain
had made our big game collecting negligible although we
had traveled through some excellent country. The
Mekong valley might not be better but it was an unknown
quantity and, whether or not it yielded specimens,
the results from a survey of the mammal distribution
would be none the less important, and we felt that
– 183 –
it must be done; otherwise we should have turned our
backs on the north and returned to Ta-li Fu.

As we rode down the mountain trail we passed caravan
after caravan of Tibetans with heavily loaded
horses, all bound for that land of mystery beyond the
snow-capped barriers. Often we tried to stop some of
the red-skinned natives and persuade them to pose for
a color photograph, but usually they only shook their
heads stubbornly and hurried past with averted faces.
We finally waylaid a Chinese and a Tibetan who were
walking together. The Chinaman was an amiable fellow
and by giving each of them a glass jam tumbler
they halted a moment. As soon as the photograph had
been taken the Chinese indicated that he expected us
to produce one and was thoroughly disgusted when we
showed him that it was impossible.

Repassing the Lolo village, we followed the river
gorge at the upper end of which Chung-tien is located
and left the forests when we emerged on the main road.
From the top of a ten thousand foot pass there was a
magnificent view down the cañon to the snow-capped
mountains, which were beautiful beyond description in
their changing colors of purple and gold.

Just after leaving the pass we met a caravan of several
hundred horses each bearing two whole pigs bent
double and tied to the saddles. The animals had been
denuded of hair, salted, and sewn up, and soon would
be distributed among the villages somewhere in the interior
of Tibet.

On the second day we saw before us seven snow-crowned
peaks as sharp and regular as the teeth of a
saw rising above the mouth of the stream where it
spreads like a fan over a sandy delta and empties into
– 184 –
the Yangtze. Here the mighty river, flowing proudly
southward from its home in the wind-blown steppes of
the “Forbidden Land,” countless ages ago found the
great Snow Mountain range barring its path. Thrust
aside, it doubled back upon itself along the barrier’s
base, still restlessly seeking a passage through the wall
of rock. Far to the north it bit hungrily into the mountain’s
side again, broke through, and swung south
gathering strength and volume from hundreds of tributaries
as it rushed onward to the sea.

For two days we rode along the river bank and
crossed at the Shih-ku ferry. There was none of the
difficulty here which we had experienced at Taku, for
the river is wide and the current slow. It required only
two hours to transport our entire caravan while at the
other ferry we had waited a day and a half. Strangely
enough, although there are dozens of villages along the
Yangtze and the valley is highly cultivated, we saw no
sign of fishing. Moreover, we passed but three boats
and five or six rafts and it was evident that this great
waterway, which for fifteen hundred miles from its
mouth influences the trade of China so profoundly, is
here used but little by the natives.

On the ride down the river we had good sport with
the huge cranes (probably Grus nigricollis) which, in
small flocks, were feeding along the river fields. The
birds stood about five feet high and we could see their
great black and white bodies and black necks farther
than a man was visible. It was fairly easy to stalk them
to within a hundred yards, but even at that distance they
offered a rather small target, for they were so largely
wings, neck, legs, and tail. We were never within shotgun
range and indeed it would be difficult to kill the
birds with anything smaller than BB or buckshot unless
they were very near.

The Gorge of the Yangtze River

– 185 –

Heller shot our first cranes with his .250-.300 Savage
rifle. He stole upon five which were feeding in a meadow
and fired while two were “lined up.” One of the huge
birds flapped about on the ground for a few moments
and lay still, but the larger was only wing-tipped and
started off at full speed across the fields. Two mafus
left the caravan, yelling with excitement, and ran for
nearly half a mile before they overtook the bird. Then
they were kept at bay for fifteen minutes by its long
beak which is a really formidable weapon. As food the
cranes were perfectly delicious when stuffed with chestnut
dressing and roasted. Each one provided two meals
for three of us with enough left over for hash and our
appetites were by no means birdlike.

Although the natives attempt to kill cranes they are
not often successful, for the birds are very watchful and
will not allow a man within a hundred yards. Such a
distance for primitive guns or crossbows might as well
be a hundred miles, but with our high-power rifles we
were able to shoot as many as were needed for food.

The birds almost invariably followed the river when
flying and fed in the rice, barley, and corn fields not far
from the water. It was an inspiring sight to see a flock
of the huge birds run for a few steps along the ground
and then launch themselves into the air, their black and
white wings flashing in the sunlight. They formed into
orderly ranks like a company of soldiers or strung out
in a long thin line across the sky.

When we disturbed a flock from especially desirable
feeding grounds they would sometimes whirl and circle
above the fields, ascending higher and higher in great
– 186 –
spirals until they were lost to sight, their musical voices
coming faintly down to us like the distant shouts of
happy children.

When we returned to Ta-li Fu in early January,
cranes were very abundant in the fields about the lake.
They had arrived in late October and would depart in
early spring, according to Mr. Evans. We often saw
the birds on sand banks along the Yangtze, but they
were usually resting or quietly walking about and were
not feeding; apparently they eat only rice, barley, corn,
or other grain.

This species was discovered by the great traveler and
naturalist, Lieutenant Colonel Prjevalsky, who found
it in the Koko-nor region of Tibet, and it was later recorded
by Prince Henri d’Orleans from Ts’ang in the
Tibetan highlands. Apparently specimens from Yün-nan
have not been preserved in museums and the bird
was not known to occur in this portion of China.

Along the Yangtze on our way westward we shot a
good many mallard ducks (Anas boscas) and ruddy
sheldrakes (Casarca casarca); the latter are universally
known as “brahminy ducks” by the foreigners in Burma
and Yün-nan, but they are not true ducks. The name
is derived from the bird’s beautiful buff and rufous color
which is somewhat like that of the robes worn by the
Brahmin priests. In America the name “sheldrake” is
applied erroneously to the fish-eating mergansers, and
much confusion has thus arisen, for the two are quite
unrelated and belong to perfectly distinct groups. The
mergansers have narrow, hooked, saw-toothed beaks
quite unlike those of the sheldrakes, and their habits are
entirely dissimilar.

The brahminy ducks, although rather tough, are not
– 187 –
bad eating. We usually found them feeding in fields
not far from the river or in flooded rice dykes, and very
often sitting in pairs on the sand banks near the water.
They have a bisyllabic rather plaintive note which is
peculiarly fascinating to me and, like the honk of the
Canada goose, awakens memories of sodden, wind-blown
marshes, bobbing decoys, and a leaden sky shot
through with V-shaped lines of flying birds.

Mallards were frequently to be found with the sheldrakes,
and we had good shooting along the river and
in ponds and rice fields. We also saw a few teal but
they were by no means abundant. Pheasants were
scarce. We shot a few along the road and near some of
our camps, but we found no place in Yün-nan where one
could have even a fair day’s shooting without the aid of
a good dog. This is strikingly different from Korea
where in a walk over the hillsides a dozen or more
pheasants can be flushed within an hour.

After two and one-half days’ travel up the Yangtze
we turned westward toward Wei-hsi and camped on a
beautiful flat plain beside a tree-bordered stream. It
was a cold clear night and after dinner and a smoke
about the fire we all turned in.

Both of us were asleep when suddenly a perfect bedlam
of angry exclamations and Chinese curses roused
the whole camp. In a few moments Wu came to our
tent, almost speechless with rage and stammered,
“Damn fool soldiers come try to take our horses; say if
mafu no give them horses they untie loads. Shall I tell
mafu break their heads?” We did not entirely understand
the situation but it seemed quite proper to give
the mafus permission to do the head-breaking, and they
– 188 –
went at it with a will. After a volley of blows, there
was a scamper of feet on the frozen ground and the
soldiers retired considerably the worse for wear.

When the battle was over, Wu explained matters
more fully. It appeared that a large detachment of
soldiers had recently passed up this road to A-tun-tzu
and four or five had remained behind to attend to the
transport of certain supplies. Seeing an opportunity
for “graft” the soldiers were stopping every caravan
which passed and threatening to commandeer it unless
the mafus gave a sufficient bribe to buy their immunity.
Our mafus, with the protection which foreigners gave
them, had paid off a few old scores with interest. That
they had neglected no part of the reckoning was quite
evident when next morning two of the soldiers came to
apologize for their “mistake.” One of them had a black
and swollen eye and the other was nursing a deep cut
on his forehead; they were exceedingly humble and did
not venture into camp until they had been assured
that we would not again loose our terrible mafus upon
them.

Such extortions are every day occurrences in many
parts of China and it is little wonder that the military
is cordially hated and feared by the peasants. The soldiers,
taking advantage of their uniform, oppress the
villagers in numberless ways from which there is no redress.
If a complaint is made a dozen soldiers stand
ready to swear that the offense was justified or was
never committed, and the poor farmer is lucky if he
escapes without a beating or some more severe punishment.
It is a disgrace to China that such conditions are
allowed to exist, and it is to be hoped that ere many
– 189 –
years have passed the country will awake to a proper
recognition of the rights of the individual. Until she
does there never can be a national spirit of patriotism
in China and without patriotism the Republic can be
one in name only.

DOWN THE MEKONG VALLEY

On December 11, we had tiffin on the summit of a
twelve thousand foot pass in a beautiful snow-covered
meadow, from which we could see the glistening peaks
of the vast mountain range which forms the Mekong-Salween
divide. In the afternoon we readied Wei-hsi
and camped in a grove of splendid pine trees on a hill
overlooking the city. The place was rather disappointing
after Li-chiang. The shops were poor and it was
difficult to buy rice even though the entire valley was
devoted to paddy fields, but we did get quantities of
delicious persimmons.

Wu told us that seven different languages were
spoken in the city, and we could well believe it, for we
recognized Mosos, Lolos, Chinese, and Tibetans. This
region is nearly the extreme western limit of the Moso
tribe which appears not to extend across the Mekong
River.

The mandarin at Wei-hsi received us hospitably and
proved to be one of the most courteous officials whom
we met in Yün-nan. We were sorry to learn that he
was killed in a horrible way only a few weeks after our
visit. Trouble arose with the peasants over the tax on
salt and fifteen hundred rebelled, attacked the city, and
captured it after a sharp fight. It was reported that
they immediately beheaded the mandarin’s wives and
children, and boiled him alive in oil.

A Quiet Curve of the Mekong River

– 191 –

Although the magistrate offered to assist us in every
way we could obtain no information concerning either
hunting grounds or routes of travel. The flying squirrels
which we had hoped to find near the city were reported
to come from a mountain range beyond the Mekong
in Burma, and Wei-hsi was merely a center of distribution
for the skins. Moreover, the natives said it
would be impossible to obtain squirrels at that time of
the year, for the mountain passes were so heavily covered
with snow that neither men nor caravans could cross
them.

It was desirable, however, to descend to the Mekong
River in order to determine whether there would be a
change in fauna, and on Major Davies’ map a small road
was marked down the valley. A stiff climb of a day and
a half over a thickly forested mountain ridge, frozen
and snow-covered, brought us in sight of the green waters
of the Mekong which has carved a gorge for itself
in an almost straight line from the bleak Tibetan
plateaus through Yün-nan and Indo-China to the sea.

Our second camp was on the river at the mouth of a
deep valley, near a small village. Wu said that the natives
were Lutzus and I was inclined to believe he was
right, although Major Davies indicates this region to be
inhabited by Lisos. At any rate these people both in
physical appearance and dress were quite distinct from
the Lisos whom we met later.

They were exceedingly pleasant and friendly and the
chief, accompanied by four venerable men, brought a
present of rice. I gave him two tins of cigarettes and
the natives returned to the village wreathed in smiles.

The garments of the Lutzus were characteristic and
quite unlike those of the Mosos, Lisos or Tibetans. The
– 192 –
women wore a long coat or jacket of blue cloth, trousers,
and a very full pleated skirt. The men were dressed in
plum colored coats and trousers.

The natives said that monkeys (probably Pygathrix)
were often seen when the corn was ripe and that even yet
they might be found in the forest across the river. Heller
spent a day hunting them, but found none and we obtained
only one new mammal in our traps. It was a tiny
mouse (Micromys) but the remainder of the fauna was
essentially the same as that of the Yangtze valley and the
intervening country.

For three days we traveled down the Mekong River.
Although the natives said that the trail was good, we discovered
when it was too late that it was too narrow and
difficult to make it practicable for a caravan such as
ours. It was necessary to continually remove the loads
in order to lift them around sharp corners or over rocks,
and the mafus sometimes had to cut away great sections
of the bank. Usually only six or seven miles could be
traversed after eight or nine hours of exhausting work,
and we were glad when we could leave the river.

The Mekong, on an average, is not more than a hundred
yards wide in this region and, like the Yangtze, the
water is very green from the Tibetan snows. The prevailing
rock is red slate or sandstone instead of limestone,
as in the country to the eastward, and the sides of the
valley are so precipitous that it seems impossible for a
human being to walk over them, and yet they are patched
with brown corn fields from the summit to the water.
Considering the small area available for cultivation there
are a considerable number of inhabitants, who have gathered
into villages and seldom live in isolated houses
as in the Yangtze valley. Wherever a stream comes
– 193 –
down from the mountain-side or can be diverted by irrigating
ditches, the ground is beautifully terraced for
rice paddys, but in other places, corn and peas appear to
be the principal crops. Very few vegetables, such as turnips,
squash, carrots or potatoes are raised, which is
rather remarkable, as they are so abundant in all the
country between the Mekong and the Yangtze rivers.
In several places the water was spanned by rope bridges.
The cables are made of twisted bamboo, and as one end
must necessarily be higher than the other, there are always
two ropes, one to cross each way. The traveler is
tied by leather thongs in a sitting position to a wooden
“runner” which slides along the bamboo cable and shoots
across the river at tremendous speed.

The valley is hopeless from a zoölogical standpoint.
It is too dry for small mammals and the mountain slopes
are so precipitous, thinly forested, and generally undesirable,
that, except for gorals, no other large game
would live there. The bird life is decidedly uninteresting.
There are no cranes or sheldrakes and, except for
a few flocks of mallards which feed in the rice fields, we
saw no other ducks or geese.

On December 20, we turned away from the Mekong
valley and began to march southeast by east across an
unmapped region toward Ta-li Fu. We camped at
night on a pretty ridge thickly covered with spruce trees
just above a deep moist ravine. In the morning our
traps contained several rare shrews, five silver moles, a
number of interesting mice, and a beautiful rufous
spiny rat. It was too good a place to leave and I sent
Hotenfa to inquire from a family of natives if there was
big game of any sort in the vicinity. He reported that
there were goral not far away, and at half past eight
– 194 –
we rode down the trail for three miles when I left my
horse at a peasant’s house. They told us that the goral
were on a rocky, thinly forested mountain which rose
two thousand feet above the valley, and for an hour
and a half we climbed steadily upward.

We were resting near the summit on the rim of a deep
cañon when Hotenfa excitedly whispered, “gnai-yang”
and held up three fingers. He tried to show the animals
to me and at last I caught sight of what I thought was a
goral standing on a narrow ledge. I fired and a bit of
rock flew into the air while the three gorals disappeared
among the trees two hundred feet above the spot where
I had supposed them to be.

I was utterly disgusted at my mistake but we started
on a run for the other side of the gorge. When we arrived,
Hotenfa motioned me to swing about to the right
while he climbed along the face of the rock wall. No
sooner had he reached the edge of the precipice than I
saw him lean far out, fire with my three-barrel gun, and
frantically wave for me to come. I ran to him and,
throwing my arms about a projecting shrub, looked
down. There directly under us stood a huge goral, but
just as I was about to shoot, the earth gave way beneath
my feet and I would have fallen squarely on the animal
had Hotenfa not seized me by the collar and drawn me
back to safety.

The goral had not discovered where the shower of dirt
and stones came from before I fired hurriedly, breaking
his fore leg at the knee. Without the slightest sign of
injury the ram disappeared behind a corner of the rock.
I dashed to the top of the ridge in time to see him running
at full speed across a narrow open ledge toward a
thick mass of cover on the opposite side of the cañon. I
– 195 –
fired just as the animal gained the trees and, at the
crash of my rifle, the goral plunged headlong down the
mountain, stone dead.

It fell on a narrow slide of loose rock which led nearly
to the bottom of the valley and, slipping and rolling in a
cloud of red dust, dropped over a precipice. The ram
brought up against an unstable boulder five hundred
feet below us, and it required half an hour’s hard work
to reach the spot.

When I finally lifted its head one of the horns which
had been broken in the fall slipped through my fingers,
and away went the goral on another rough and tumble
descent, finally stopping on a rock ledge nearly eleven
hundred feet from the place where it had been shot. We
returned to camp at noon bringing joy with us, for, as
my wife had remarked the day before, “We will soon
have to eat chickens or cans.”

Heller hunted the gorals unsuccessfully the following
day and we left on December 23, camping at night on a
flat terrace beside a stream at the end of a moist ravine.
We intended to spend Christmas here for it was a beautiful
spot, surrounded by virgin forest, but our celebration
was to be on Christmas Eve. The following day
dawned bright and clear. There had not been a drop of
rain for nearly a month and the weather was just warm
enough for comfort in the sun with one’s coat off, but at
night the temperature dropped to about 16°+ or 20°+
Fahr. The camp proved to be a good one, giving us two
new mammals and, just after tiffin, Hotenfa came running
in to report that he had discovered seven gray monkeys
(probably Pygathrix) in a cornfield a mile away.

The monkeys had disappeared ere we arrived, but
while we were gone Yvette had been busy and, just
– 196 –
before dinner, she ushered us into our tent with great ceremony.
It had been most wonderfully transformed. At
the far end stood a Christmas tree, blazing with tiny
candles and surrounded by masses of white cotton,
through which shone red holly berries. Holly branches
from the forest and spruce boughs lined the tent and
hung in green waves from the ridge pole. At the base of
the tree gifts which she had purchased in Hongkong in
the preceding August were laid out.

Heller mixed a fearful and wonderful cocktail from
the Chinese wine and orange juice, and we drank to each
other and to those at home while sitting on the ground
and opening our packages. We had purchased two Tibetan
rugs in Li-chiang and Wei-hsi, as Christmas presents
for Yvette. These rugs usually are blue or red,
with intricate designs in the center, and are well woven
and attractive.

To the servants and mafus we gave money and cigarettes.
When the muleteers were brought to the tent to
receive their gifts they evidently thought our blazing
tree represented an altar, for they kneeled down and began
to make the “chin, chin joss” which is always done
before their heathen gods.

Our Christmas dinner was a masterpiece. Four days
previously I had shot a pair of mallard ducks and they
formed the pièce de résistance. The dinner consisted of
soup, ducks stuffed with chestnuts, currant jelly, baked
squash, creamed carrots, chocolate cake, cheese and
crackers, coffee and cigarettes.

Christmas day we traveled, and in the late afternoon
passed through a very dirty Chinese town in a deep valley
near some extensive salt wells. Red clay dust lay
thick over everything and the filth of the streets and
– 197 –
houses was indescribable. We camped in a cornfield a
mile beyond the village, but were greatly annoyed by the
Chinese who insisted on swarming into camp. Finally,
unable longer to endure their insolent stares, I drove
them with stones to the top of the hill, where they sat in
row upon row exactly as in the “bleachers” at an
American baseball game.

When we left the following day we passed dozens of
caravans and groups of men and women carrying great
disks of salt. Each piece was stamped in red with the
official mark for salt is a government monopoly and only
licensed merchants are allowed to deal in it; moreover,
the importation of salt from foreign countries is forbidden.
For the purposes of administration, China is
divided into seven or eight main circuits, each of which
has its own sources of production and the salt obtained
in one district may not be sold in another.

In Yün-nan the salt of the province is supplied from
three regions. The water from the wells is boiled in
great cauldrons for several days, and the resulting deposit
is earth impregnated with salt. This is crushed, mixed
with water, and boiled again until only pure salt remains.
After passing a village of considerable size called Peiping,
we began the ascent of an exceedingly steep mountain
range twelve thousand feet high. All the afternoon
we toiled upward in the rain and camped late in the evening
at a pine grove on a little plateau two-thirds of the
way to the summit. During the night it snowed heavily
and we awoke to find ourselves in a transformed world.

Every tree and bush was dressed in garments of purest
white and between the branches we could look westward
across the valley toward the Mekong and the purple
mountain wall of the Burma border. There were
– 198 –
still one thousand feet of climbing between us and the
summit of the pass. The trail was almost blocked, but
by slow work we forced our way through the drifts.
Some of the mules were already weak from exposure and
underfeeding, and two of them had to be relieved of their
loads; they died the next day. Our mafus did not appear
to suffer greatly although their legs were bare from
the knees down and their feet had no covering except
straw sandals. Indeed when we discovered, on the summit
of the pass, a tiny hut in which a fire was burning,
they waited only a few moments to warm themselves.

We met two other caravans fighting their way up the
mountain from the other side, and by following the trail
which they had broken through the drifts we made fairly
good time on the descent. There had been no snow on
the broad, flat plain which we reached in the late afternoon
and we found that its ponds and fields were alive
with ducks, geese, and cranes. The birds were wild but
we had good shooting when we broke camp in the morning
and killed enough to last us several days.

On December 31, our weary days of crossing range
after range of tremendous mountains were ended, and
we stood on the last pass looking down upon the great
Chien-chuan plain. Outside the grim walls of the old
city, which lies on the main A-tun-tzu-Ta-li Fu road,
are two large marshy ponds and, away to the south, is an
extensive lake. We camped just without the courtyard
of a fine temple, and at four o’clock Yvette and I went
over to the water which was swarming with ducks and
geese.

Neither of us will ever forget that shoot in the glorious
afternoon sunlight. Cloud after cloud of ducks rose as
we neared the pond and circled high above our heads, but
– 199 –
now and then a straggling mallard or “pin tail” would
swing across the sky within range; as my gun roared out
the birds would whirl to the ground like feathered bombs
or climb higher with frightened quacks if the shot went
wild. An hour before dark the brahminy ducks began to
come in. We could hear their melodious plaintive calls
long before we could see the birds, and we flattened ourselves
out in the grass and mud. Soon a thin, black line
would streak the sky, and as they drew nearer, Yvette
would draw such seductive notes from a tiny horn of
wood and bone that the flock would swing and dive toward
us in a rush of flashing wings. When we could see
the brown bodies right above our heads I would sit up
and bang away.

Now and then a big white goose would drop into the
pond or an ibis flap lazily overhead, seeming to realize
that it had nothing to fear from the prostrate bodies
which spat fire at other birds. The stillness of the marsh
was absolute save for the voices of the water fowl mingled
in the wild, sweet clamor so dear to the heart of
every sportsman. As the day began to die, hung about
with ducks and geese, we walked slowly back across the
rice fields, to the yellow fires before our tents. It was
our last camp for the year and, as if to bid us farewell as
we journeyed toward the tropics, the peaks of the great
Snow Mountain far to the north, had draped themselves
in a gorgeous silver mantle and glistened against a sky
of lavender and gold like white cathedral spires.

On January 3, we camped early in the afternoon on a
beautiful little plain beside a spring overhung with giant
trees at the head of Erh Hai, or Ta-li Fu Lake, which is
thirty miles long. The fields and marshes were alive
with ducks, geese, cranes, and lapwings, and we had a
– 200 –
glorious day of sport over decoys and on the water before
we went on to Ta-li Fu.

Mr. Evans was about to leave for a long business trip
to the south of the province and we took possession of a
pretty temple just within the north gate of the city.
Here we read a great accumulation of mail and learned
that a thousand pounds of supplies which we had ordered
from Hongkong had just arrived.

Through the good offices of Mr. Howard Page, manager
of the Standard Oil Company of Yün-nan Fu, their
passage through Tonking had been facilitated, and he
had dispatched the boxes by caravan to Ta-li Fu. Mr.
Page rendered great assistance to the Expedition in
numberless ways, and to him we owe our personal thanks
as well as those of the American Museum of Natural
History.

All the servants except our faithful Wu left at Ta-li
Fu but, with the aid of Mr. Hanna, we obtained a much
better personnel for the trip to the Burma frontier. The
cook, who was one of Mr. Hanna’s converts, was an especially
fine fellow and proved to be as energetic and
competent as the other had been lazy and helpless.

Our work in the north had brought us a collection of
thirteen hundred mammals, as well as several hundred
birds, much material for habitat groups, and a splendid
series of photographic records in Paget color plates,
black and white negatives, and motion picture film. But
what was of first importance, we had covered an enormous
extent of diverse country and learned much about
the distribution of the fauna of northern Yün-nan. The
thirteen hundred mammals of our collection were taken
in a more or less continuous line across six tremendous
mountain ranges, and furnish an illuminating cross section
of the entire region from Ta-li Fu, north to Chung-tien,
and west to the Mekong River.

The Temple in which We Camped at Ta-li Fu

A Crested Muntjac

– 201 –

It is apparent that in this part of the province, which
is all within one “life zone” even the smallest mammals
are widely spread and that the principal factor in determining
distribution is the flora. Neither the highest
mountain ridges nor such deep swift rivers as the
Yangtze and the Mekong appear to act as effective
barriers to migration, and as long as the vegetation
remains constant, the fauna changes but little.

MISSIONARIES WE HAVE KNOWN

During our work in Fukien Province and in various
parts of Yün-nan we came into intimate personal contact
with a great many missionaries; indeed every traveler in
the interior of China will meet them unless he purposely
avoids doing so. But the average tourist seldom sees the
missionary in his native habitat because, for the most
part, he lives and works where the tourist does not go.

Nevertheless, that does not prevent the coastwise
traveler from carrying back with him from the East a
very definite impression of the missionary, which he has
gained on board ships or in Oriental clubs where he hears
him “damned with faint praise.” Almost unconsciously
he adopts the popular attitude just as he enlarges his
vocabulary to include “pidgin English” and such unfamiliar
phrases as “tiffin,” “bund” and “cumshaw.”

This chapter is not a brief for the missionary, but
simply a matter of fair play. We feel that in justice
we ought to present our observations upon this subject,
which is one of very general interest, as impartially as
upon any phase of our scientific work. But it should be
distinctly understood that we are writing only of those
persons whom we met and lived with, and whose work
we had an opportunity to know and to see; we are not
attempting generalizations on the accomplishments of
missionaries in any other part of China.

There are three charges which we have heard most
– 203 –
frequently brought against the missionary: that he
comes to the East because he can live better and more
luxuriously than he can at home; that he often engages
in lucrative trade with the natives; and that he accomplishes
little good, either religious or otherwise. It is
said that his converts are only “rice Christians,” and
treaty-port foreigners have often warned us in this
manner, “Don’t take Christian servants; they are more
dishonest and unreliable than any others.”

It is often true that the finest house in a Chinese town
will be that of the resident missionary. In Yen-ping the
mission buildings are imposing structures, and are placed
upon a hill above and away from the rest of the city.
Any white person who has traveled in the interior of
China will remember the airless, lightless, native houses,
opening, as they all do, on filthy streets and reeking
sewers and he will understand that in order to exist at all
a foreigner must be somewhat isolated and live in a clean,
well-ventilated house.

Every missionary in China employs servants—many
more servants than he could afford at home. So does
every other foreigner, whatever his vocation. There is
no such thing in China as the democracy of the West,
and the missionary’s status in the community demands
that certain work in his house be done by servants; otherwise
he and his family would be placed on a level with
the coolie class and the value of his words and deeds be
discounted. But the chief reason is that the missionary’s
wife almost always has definite duties to which
she could not attend if she were not relieved from some
of the household cares. She leads in work among the
women of the community by organizing clubs and “Mutual
Improvement Societies” and in teaching in the
– 204 –
schools or hospitals where young men and women are
learning English as an asset to medical work among
their own people. Servants are unbelievably cheap.
While we were in Foochow a cook received $8.50
(gold) per month, a laundryman $1.75 (gold) per
month, and other wages were in proportion.

In Fukien Province the missionaries receive two
months’ vacation. Anyone who has lived through a
Fukien summer in the interior of the province will know
why the missionaries are given this vacation. If they
were not able to leave the deadly heat and filth and disease
of the native cities for a few weeks every year,
there would be no missionaries to carry on the work.
The business man can surround himself with innumerable
comforts both in his home and in his office which
the missionary cannot afford and, during the summer,
life is not only made possible thereby but even pleasant.

Yen-ping is eight days’ travel from Foochow up the
Min River and it is by no means the most remote station
in the province. Very few travelers reach these places
during the year and the white inhabitants are almost isolated.
Miss Mabel Hartford lives alone at Yuchi and at
one time she saw only one foreigner in eight months.
Miss Cordelia Morgan is the sole foreign resident of
Chu-hsuing Fu, a large Chinese city six days from
Yün-nan Fu. In Ta-li Fu, Reverend William J. Hanna,
his wife and two other women, are fourteen days’ ride
from the nearest foreign settlement. In Li-chiang, Reverend
and Mrs. A. Kok and their three small children
live with two women missionaries. They are twenty-one
days’ travel from a doctor, and for four years previous
to our visit they had not seen a white woman.

These are some instances of missionaries whom we met
– 205 –
in China who have voluntarily exiled themselves to remote
places where they expect to spend their entire lives
surrounded by an indifferent if not hostile population.
Can anyone possibly believe that they have chosen this
life because it is easier or more luxurious than that at
home?

Some of the men whom we met had left lucrative business
positions to take up medical or evangelistic work in
China where their compensation is pitifully small—not
one-third of the salary they were commanding at home.
We did not meet any missionaries who were engaging
in trade with the natives even though in some places
there were excellent business opportunities.

Consider the doctors as examples of the civilizing influences
which missionaries bring with them. We saw
them in various parts of China doing a magnificent wort
Dr. Bradley has established a great leper hospital at
Paik-hoi where these human outcasts are receiving the
latest and most scientific treatment and beginning to
look at life with a new hope. In Yen-ping, at the time
of the rebellion, we saw Dr. Trimble working hour after
hour over wounded and broken men without a thought of
rest. In Yün-nan Fu, Dr. Thompson’s hospital was
filled with patients suffering from almost every known
disease. In Ta-li Fu we saw Mr. Hanna and his wife
dispensing medicines and treating the minor ills of patients
waiting by the dozen, the fees received being not
enough to pay for the cost of the medicines. Why is
it that every traveling foreigner in the interior of China
is supposed to be able to cure diseases? Certainly an
important reason is because of the work done by the
medical missionaries who have penetrated to the farthest
corners of the most remote provinces.

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Aside from their medical work, missionaries are in
many instances the real pioneers of western civilization.
They bring to the people new standards of living, both
morally and physically. They open schools and emancipate
the Chinese children in mind and body. They fight
the barbarous customs of foot binding and the killing
and selling of girl babies. Until recent years it was
not unusual to meet the village “baby peddler” with
from two to six tiny infants peddling his “goods” from
village to village. Not many years ago such a man
appeared before the mission compound at Ngu-cheng
(Fukien) with four babies in his basket. Three of
these had expired from exposure and the kerosene oil
which had been poured down their throats to stupefy
them and drown their cries. The fourth was purchased
by the wife of the native preacher for ten cents in order
to save its life. This child was reared and has since
graduated from the mission schools with credit. In
Foochow a stone tablet bearing the following inscription
stands beside a stagnant pool: “Hereafter the
throwing of babies into this pool will be punished by
law.” This was a result of the work of the missionaries.

Their task is by no means easy and, as Mr. Hanna
once remarked, “Yün-nan Province has broken the heart
of more than one missionary.” The Chinese do not understand
their point of view, and it is difficult to make
them see it. A Chinaman is a rank materialist and pure
altruism does not enter into his scheme of life. As a rule
he has but two thoughts, his stomach and his cash bag.
It is well-nigh impossible to make him realize that the
missionary has not come with an ulterior motive—if not
to engage in trade, perhaps as a spy for his government.
Others believe that it is because China is so vastly
– 207 –
superior to the rest of the world that the missionaries wish
to live there. Eventually the suspicions of the natives
become quieted and they accept the missionary at some
part of his true worth.

At the time of the rebellion in Yen-ping we saw
Harry Caldwell, Mr. Bankhardt and Dr. Trimble save
the lives of hundreds of people and the city from partial
destruction because the Chinese officers of the opposing
forces would trust the missionaries when they would
not trust each other.

An excellent piece of practical missionary work was
done in Fukien Province, not long after our visit there.
As we have related in Chapter III, several large bands
of brigands were established in the hills about Yuchi.
Brigandage began there in the following way. During
a famine when the people were on the verge of starvation,
a wealthy farmer, Su Ek by name, decided to do
his share in relieving conditions by offering for sale a
quantity of rice which he had accumulated. He approached
another man of similar wealth who agreed
with him to sell his grain at a reasonable price. Su Ek
accordingly disposed of his rice to the suffering people
and, when he had remaining only enough to sustain his
own family until the following harvest, he sent the
peasants to the second man who had also agreed to
dispose of his grain.

This farmer refused to sell at the stipulated price,
and the people, angered at his treachery, looted his
sheds. He immediately went to Foochow and reported
to the governor that there was a band of brigands abroad
in Yuchi County under the leadership of Su Ek, and
that they had robbed and plundered his property.