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Robert Bike

Robert Bike

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I graduated from Freeport (Illinois) High School.
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Remarkable Stories,
Volume 1


by Robert Bike

Remarkable events have happened in Freeport and Stephenson County, Illinois, and remarkable people have lived there. These are stories gathered about people and events from 1835 through World War II.

By no means complete, these are overviews of lives and events which shaped our country and our world. From events in the lives of Tutty Baker, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Guiteau, Leonard Colby, Jane Addams and Bob Wienand come stories that will amaze you. Welcome to Volume 1 of our living history.

The author lives in Eugene, Oregon, and works as a Licensed Massage Therapist and Life Coach. An amateur historian, parts of these stories and many more appear on this website.

Buy now! Only 99 cents to download in .pdf format!

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Biblical Aromatherapy

by Robert Bike

The Bible mentions about 232 plants by name, or closely enough to figure out what plant is meant. Of these, 24 are aromatic plants; that is, parts of the plants can be pressed or distilled to get an essential oil. Essential oils are the lifeblood of plants and have tremendous healing capabilities.

The healing power of plants is the basis for modern medicines.

Biblical Aromatherapy
discusses how the plants were used in biblical days and how you can use the essential oils from biblical plants.

Originally published in manuscript form in 1999, I completely revised the book and added illustrations.

To order Biblical Aromatherapy in paperback,
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List price $24.99; introductory offer $19.99


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Olga Carlile, columnist for the Freeport (Illinois) Journal Standard, featured this website in her column on January 19, 2007.
Here is a jpg scan.

Harriet Gustason, another columnist for the Freeport Journal Standard, has featured this website twice. Click to see pdf of articles:
June 29, 2012
November 3, 2012

 

"My Life Purpose is to inspire my friends
and clients to achieve
success, health,
wealth and happiness
by empowering them
to reach their potential,
while living in harmony
with each other, animals
and our planet."
Robert Bike

Robert Bike, LMT, LLC

 

CAMPS AND TRAILS IN CHINA

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

BY

ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS, M.A.

Roy Chapman Andrews

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 OF WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA

AND

YVETTE BORUP ANDREWS

Yvette Borup Andrews

PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE ASIATIC ZOÖLOGICAL EXPEDITION

1918


PART THREE

 

CONTENTS

 

CHAPTER XXVI

Chinese New Year at Yung-chang

Y. B. A.

Traveling to Yung-chang—New Year's customs—Inhabitants of the city—Foot-binding—Caves—Water buffaloes—Chinese cow-caravans—Yung-chang mentioned by Marco Polo

CHAPTER XXVII

Traveling Toward the Tropics

Shih-tien plain—Curious inhabitants of the city—A tropical valley at Ma-po-lo—"A little more far"—A splendid camp—Many new mammals—Preparing specimens—Sambur—Trapping

CHAPTER XXVIII

Meng-ting: a Village: of Many Tongues

The first Shan village—Priscilla and John Alden—Meng-ting—The Shan mandarin—Young priests—The market—Photographing under difficulties—Suppression of opium growing

CHAPTER XXIX

Camping on the Nam-ting River

A beautiful camp—The "Dying Rabbit"—Sambur hunting—Jungle fowl—Civets—Pole cats and other animals

CHAPTER XXX

Monkey Hunting

Strange calls in the jungle—Our first gibbons—Relationship and habits—Langurs and baboons—A night in the jungle

CHAPTER XXXI

The Shans of the Burma Border

An unfriendly chief—Honest natives—Houses at Nam-ka—Tattooing—Shan tribe—Dress

CHAPTER XXXII

Prisoners of War in Burma

Y. B. A.

The mythical Ma-li-ling—Across the frontier into Burma—The mafus rebel—Ma-li-pa—Captain Clive—Guarding the border—Life at Ma-li-pa

CHAPTER XXXIII

Hunting Peacocks on the Salween River

The valley at Changlung—The ferry—Peacocks—The stalker stalked—Habits of peafowls

CHAPTER XXXIV

The Gibbons of Ho-mu-shu

Climbing out of the Salween Valley—A Shan village—Ho-mu-shu—Camping on a mountain pass—Gibbons—An exciting hunt and a narrow escape—Habits of the "hoolock"

CHAPTER XXXV

Teng-yueh: a Link with Civilization

Tai-ping-pu—Flying squirrels—Lisos—A bat cave—Mail—Teng-yueh—Mr. Ralph Grierson—Tibetan bear cubs

CHAPTER XXXVI

A Big Game Paradise

Gorals at Hui-yao—Deer—Splendid hunts

CHAPTER XXXVII

Serow and Sambur

Monkeys at Hui-yao—Muntjacs—A new serow—We move camp to Wa-tien—A fine sambur

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Last Days in China

Return to Teng-yueh—Packing the specimens—Results of the Expedition—On the road to Bhamo—The chair coolies—Burma vs. China—In civilization again—Farewell to the Orient


CAMPS AND TRAILS IN CHINA

CHAPTER XXVI

CHINESE NEW YEAR AT YUNG-CHANG

Y. B. A.

The last half of the expedition began January 13 when we left Ta-li Fu with a caravan of thirty miles for Yung-chang, eight days' travel to the south. The mafus although they had promised faithfully to come "at daylight" did not arrive until nearly noon and in consequence it was necessary to camp at Hsia-kuan at the foot of the lake.

We improved our time there in hunting about for skins and finally purchased two fine leopards and a tiger. The latter had been brought from the Tonking frontier. There were a number of Tibetans wandering about the market place and in the morning a caravan of at least two hundred horses followed by twenty or thirty Tibetans, passed into the city while it was yet gray dawn. They were bringing tea from P'u-erh and S'su-mao in the south of the province and although they had already been nearly a month upon their journey there was still many long weeks of travel before them ere they reached the wind-blown steppes of their native land.

The trip to Yung-chang proved uninteresting and uneventful. We crossed a succession of dry, thinly forested mountains from 7,000 to 8,000 feet high which near their summits were often clothed with a thick growth of rhododendron trees. The beautiful red flowers flashed like fire balls among the green leaves, peach trees were in full blossom and in some spots the dry hills seemed about to break forth in the full glory of their spring verdure. We crossed the Mekong near a village called Shia-chai on a picturesque chain suspension bridge of a type which is not unusual in the southern and western part of the province. Several heavy iron chains are firmly fastened to huge rock piers on opposite sides of the river and the roadway formed by planks laid upon them. Although the bridge shakes and swings in a rather alarming manner when a caravan is crossing, it is perfectly safe if not too heavily loaded.

In the afternoon of January 21, we rode down the mountain to the great Yung-chang plain, and for two hours trotted over a hard dirt road. The plain is eighteen miles long by six miles wide and except for its scattered villages, is almost entirely devoted to paddy fields. The city itself includes about five thousand houses. It is exceedingly picturesque and is remarkable for its long, straight, and fairly clean streets which contrast strongly with those of the usual Chinese town. At the west, but still within the city walls, is a picturesque wooded hill occupied almost exclusively by temples.

We ourselves camped between two ponds in the courtyard of a large and exceptionally clean temple just outside the south gate of the city. It was the Chinese New Year and Wu told us that for several days at least it would be impossible to obtain another caravan or expect the natives to do any work whatever. It was a very pleasant place in which to stay although we chafed at the enforced delay, but we made good use of our time in photographing and developing motion picture film, collecting birds and making various excursions.

Chinese New Year is always interesting to a foreigner and at Yung-chang we saw many of the customs attending its celebration. It is a time of feasting and merry making and no native, if he can possibly avoid it, will work on that day. Chinese families almost always live under one roof but should any male member be absent at this season the circumstances must be exceptional to prevent him from returning to his home.

It is customary, too, for brides to revisit their mother's house at New Year's. On our way to Yung-chang and for several days after leaving the city, we were continually passing young women mounted on mules or horses and accompanied by servants returning to their homes. New clothes are a leading feature of this season and the dresses of the brides and young matrons were usually of the most unexpected hues for, according to our conception of color, the Chinese can scarcely be counted conspicuous for their good taste. Purple and blue, orange and red, pink and lavender clash distressingly, but are worn with inordinate pride.

These visits are not an unalloyed pleasure to the bride's family. Dr. Smith says in "Chinese Characteristics":

When she goes to her mother's home, she goes on a strictly business basis. She takes with her it may be a quantity of sewing for her husband's family, which the wife's family must help her get through with. She is accompanied on each of these visits by as many of her children as possible, both to have her take care of them and to have them out of the way when she is not at hand to look after them, and most especially to have them fed at the expense of the family of the maternal grandmother for as long a time as possible. In regions where visits of this sort are frequent, and where there are many daughters in a family, their constant raids on the old home are a source of perpetual terror to the whole family, and a serious tax on the common resources.*

*"Chinese Characteristics," by Arthur H. Smith, p. 200.

Religious rites and ceremonies form a conspicuous part in the New Year's celebration. At this time the "Kitchen God," according to current superstition, returns to heaven to render an account of the household's behavior. The wily Chinese, however, first rubs the lips of the departing deity with candy in order to "sweeten" his report of any evil which he may have witnessed during the year.

Usually all the members of the family gather before the ancestral tablets, or should these be lacking as among many of the laboring classes, a scroll with a part of the genealogy is displayed and the spirits of the departed are appeased and honored by the burning of incense and the mumbling of incantations. While strict attention is paid to the religious observance to the dead, at New Year's the most punctilious ceremony is rendered to the living.

After the family have paid their respects to one another the younger male members go from house to house "kowtowing" to the elders who are there to receive them. The following days are devoted to visits to relatives living in the neighboring towns and villages, and this continues, an endless routine, until fourteen days later the Feast of the Lanterns puts an end to the "epoch of national leisure."

The Chinese are inveterate gamblers and at New Year's they turn feverishly to this form of amusement which is almost their only one. But they also have to think seriously about paying their debts for it is absolutely necessary for all classes and conditions of men to meet their obligations at the end of the year.

Almost everyone owes money in China. According to the clan system an individual having surplus cash is obliged to lend it (though at a high rate of interest) to any members of his family in need of help. However, a Chinaman never pays cash unless absolutely obliged to and almost never settles a debt until he has been dunned repeatedly.

The activity displayed at New Year's is ludicrous.

Each separate individual [says Dr. Smith] is engaged in the task of trying to chase down the men who owe money to him, and compel them to pay up, and at the same time in trying to avoid the persons who are struggling to track him down and corkscrew from him the amount of his indebtedness to them! The dodges and subterfuges to which each is obliged to resort, increase in complexity and number with the advance of the season, until at the close of the month, the national activity is at fever heat. For if a debt is not secured then, it will go over till a new year, and no one knows what will be the status of a claim which has actually contrived to cheat the annual Day of Judgment. In spite of the excellent Chinese habit of making the close of a year a grand clearing-house for all debts, Chinese human nature is too much for Chinese custom, and there are many of these postponed debts which are a grief of mind to many a Chinese creditor.

The Chinese are at once the most practical and the most sentimental of the human race. New Year must not be violated by duns for debts, and the debts must be collected New Year though it be. For this reason one sometimes sees an urgent creditor going about early on the first day of the year carrying a lantern looking for his creditor [=debtor]. His artificial light shows that by a social fiction the sun has not yet risen, it is still yesterday and the debt can still be claimed....

We have but to imagine the application of the principles which we have named, to the whole Chinese Empire, and we get new light upon the nature of the Chinese New Year festivities. They are a time of rejoicing, but there is no rejoicing so keen as that of a ruined debtor, who has succeeded by shrewd devices in avoiding the most relentless of his creditors and has thus postponed his ruin for at least another twelve months.

For, once past the narrow strait at the end of the year, the debtor finds himself again in the broad and peaceful waters, where he cannot be molested. Even should his creditors meet him on New Year's day, there could be no possibility of mentioning the fact of the previous day's disgraceful flight and concealment, or indeed of alluding to business at all, for this would not be "good form" and to the Chinese "Good Form" (otherwise known as custom), is the chief national divinity.*

*"Village Life in China," by Arthur H. Smith, 1907, pp. 208-209.

Yung-chang appears to be almost entirely inhabited by Chinese and in no part of the province did we see foot-binding more in evidence. Practically every woman and girl, young or old, regardless of her station in life was crippled in this brutal way. The women wear long full coats with flaring skirts which hang straight from their shoulders to their knees. When the trousers are tightly wrapped about their shrunken ankles, they look in a side view exactly like huge umbrellas.

One day we visited a cave thirty li north of the city where we hoped to find new bats. A beautiful little temple has been built over the entrance to the cavern which does not extend more than forty or fifty feet into the rock. But twenty li south of Yung-chang, just beyond the village of A-shih-wo, there is an enormous cave which is reported to extend entirely through the hill. Whether or not this is true we can not say for although we explored it in part we did not reach the end. The central corridor is about thirty feet wide and at least sixty or seventy high. We followed the main gallery for a long distance, and turned back at a branch which led off at a sharp angle. We were not equipped with sufficient candles to pursue the exploration more extensively and did not have time to visit it again. The cave contained some beautiful stalactites of considerable size, but the limestone was a dull lead color. We found only one bat and these animals appear not to have used it extensively since there was little sign upon the floor.

At Yuang-chang we saw water buffaloes for the first time in Yün-nan but found them to be in universal use farther to the south and west. The huge brutes are as docile as a kitten in the hands of the smallest native child but they do not like foreigners and discretion is the better part of valor where they are concerned.

Water buffaloes are only employed for work in the rice fields but Chinese cows are used as burden bearers in this part of the province. Such caravans travel much more slowly than do mule trains although the animals are not loaded as heavily. Two or three of the leading cows usually carry upon their backs large bells hung in wooden frameworks and the music is by no means unmelodious when heard at a distance. Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveler, refers to Yung-chang as "Vochang." His account of a battle which was fought in its vicinity in the year 1272 between the King of Burma and Bengal and one of Kublai Khan's generals is so interesting that I am quoting it below:

When the king of Mien [Burma] and Bangala [Bengal], in India, who was powerful in the number of his subjects, in extent of territory, and in wealth, heard that an army of Tartars had arrived at Vochang [Yung-chang] he took the resolution of advancing immediately to attack it, in order that by its destruction the grand khan should be deterred from again attempting to station a force upon the borders of his dominions. For this purpose he assembled a very large army, including a multitude of elephants (an animal with which his country abounds), upon whose backs were placed battlements or castles, of wood, capable of containing to the number of twelve or sixteen in each. With these, and a numerous army of horse and foot, he took the road to Vochang, where the grand khan's army lay, and encamping at no great distance from it, intended to give his troops a few days of rest.

As soon as the approach of the king of Mien, with so great a force, was known to Nestardín, who commanded the troops of the grand khan, although a brave and able officer, he felt much alarmed, not having under his orders more than twelve thousand men (veterans, indeed, and valiant soldiers); whereas the enemy had sixty thousand, besides the elephants armed as has been described. He did not, however, betray any sign of apprehension, but descending into the plain of Vochang, took a position in which his flank was covered by a thick wood of large trees, whither, in case of a furious charge by the elephants, which his troops might not be able to sustain, they could retire, and from thence, in security, annoy them with their arrows....

Upon the king of Mien's learning that the Tartars had descended into the plain, he immediately put his army in motion, took up his ground at the distance of about a mile from the enemy, and made a disposition of his force, placing the elephants in the front, and the cavalry and infantry, in two extended wings, in their rear, but leaving between them a considerable interval. Here he took his own station, and proceeded to animate his men and encourage them to fight valiantly, assuring them of victory, as well from the superiority of their numbers, being four to one, as from their formidable body of armed elephants, whose shock the enemy, who had never before been engaged with such combatants, could by no means resist. Then giving orders for sounding a prodigious number of warlike instruments, he advanced boldly with his whole army towards that of the Tartars, which remained firm, making no movement, but suffering them to approach their entrenchments.

They then rushed out with great spirit and the utmost eagerness to engage; but it was soon found that the Tartar horses, unused to the sight of such huge animals, with their castles, were terrified, and by wheeling about endeavored to fly; nor could their riders by any exertions restrain them, whilst the king, with the whole of his forces, was every moment gaining ground. As soon as the prudent commander perceived this unexpected disorder, without losing his presence of mind, he instantly adopted the measure of ordering his men to dismount and their horses to be taken into the wood, where they were fastened to the trees.

When dismounted, the men without loss of time, advanced on foot towards the line of elephants, and commenced a brisk discharge of arrows; whilst, on the other side, those who were stationed in the castles, and the rest of the king's army, shot volleys in return with great activity; but their arrows did not make the same impression as those of the Tartars, whose bows were drawn with a stronger arm. So incessant were the discharges of the latter, and all their weapons (according to the instructions of their commander) being directed against the elephants, these were soon covered with arrows, and, suddenly giving way, fell back upon their own people in the rear, who were thereby thrown into confusion. It soon became impossible for their drivers to manage them, either by force or address. Smarting under the pain of their wounds, and terrified by the shouting of the assailants, they were no longer governable, but without guidance or control ran about in all directions, until at length, impelled by rage and fear, they rushed into a part of the wood not occupied by the Tartars. The consequence of this was, that from the closeness of the branches of large trees, they broke, with loud crashes, the battlements or castles that were upon their backs, and involved in the destruction those who sat upon them.

Upon seeing the rout of the elephants the Tartars acquired fresh courage, and filing off by detachments, with perfect order and regularity, they remounted their horses, and joined their several divisions, when a sanguinary and dreadful combat was renewed. On the part of the king's troops there was no want of valor, and he himself went amongst the ranks entreating them to stand firm, and not to be alarmed by the accident that had befallen the elephants. But the Tartars by their consummate skill in archery, were too powerful for them, and galled them the more exceedingly, from their not being provided with such armor as was worn by the former.

The arrows having been expended on both sides, the men grasped their swords and iron maces, and violently encountered each other. Then in an instant were to be seen many horrible wounds, limbs dismembered, and multitudes falling to the ground, maimed and dying; with such effusion of blood as was dreadful to behold. So great also was the clangor of arms, and such the shoutings and the shrieks, that the noise seemed to ascend to the skies. The king of Mien, acting as became a valiant chief, was present wherever the greatest danger appeared, animating his soldiers, and beseeching them to maintain their ground with resolution. He ordered fresh squadrons from the reserve to advance to the support of those that were exhausted; but perceiving at length that it was impossible any longer to sustain the conflict or to withstand the impetuosity of the Tartars, the greater part of his troops being either killed or wounded, and all the field covered with the carcasses of men and horses, whilst those who survived were beginning to give way, he also found himself compelled to take to flight with the wreck of his army, numbers of whom were afterwards slain in the pursuit....

The Tartars having collected their force after the slaughter of the enemy, returned towards the wood into which the elephants had fled for shelter, in order to take possession of them, where they found that the men who had escaped from the overthrow were employed in cutting down trees and barricading the passages, with the intent of defending themselves. But their ramparts were soon demolished by the Tartars, who slew many of them, and with the assistance of the persons accustomed to the management of the elephants, they possessed themselves of these to the number of two hundred or more. From the period of this battle the grand khan has always chosen to employ elephants in his armies, which before that time he had not done. The consequences of the victory were, that he acquired possession of the whole of the territories of the king of Bangala and Mien, and annexed them to his dominions.*

*"The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian." Everyman's Library. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London; pp. 253-256.

CHAPTER XXVII

TRAVELING TOWARD THE TROPICS

We left Yung-chang with no regret on Monday, January 28. Our stay there would have been exceedingly pleasant under ordinary conditions but it was impossible not to chafe at the delay occasioned by the caravan. Traveling southward for two days over bare brown mountainsides, their monotony unrelieved except by groves of planted pine and fir trees, we descended abruptly into the great subtropical valley at Shih-tien.

Mile after mile this fertile plain stretches away in a succession of rice paddies and fields of sugar cane interspersed with patches of graceful bamboo, their summits drooping like enormous clusters of ostrich plumes; the air is warm and fragrant and the change from the surrounding hills is delightful. However, we were disappointed in the shooting for, although it appeared to be an ideal place for ducks and other water birds, we killed only five teal, and the great ponds were almost devoid of bird life. Even herons, so abundant in the north, were conspicuous by their absence and we saw no sheldrakes, geese, or mallards.

At Shih-tien we camped in a beautiful temple yard on the outskirts of the town, and with Wu I returned to the village to inquire about shooting places. We seated ourselves in the first open tea house and within ten minutes more than a hundred natives had filled the room, overflowed through the door and windows, and formed a mass of pushing, crowding bodies which completely blocked the street outside. It was a simple way of getting all the village together and Wu questioned everyone who looked intelligent.

We learned that shooting was to be found near Gen-kang, five days' travel south, and we returned to the temple just in time to receive a visit from the resident mandarin. He was a good-looking, intellectual man, with charming manners and one of the most delightful gentlemen whom we met in China.

During his visit, and until dinner was over and we had retired to our tents, hundreds of men, women and children crowded into the temple yard to gaze curiously at us. After the gates had been closed they climbed the walls and sat upon the tiles like a flock of crows. Their curiosity was insatiable but not unfriendly and nowhere throughout our expedition did we find such extraordinary interest in our affairs as was manifested by the people in this immediate region. They were largely Chinese and most of them must have met foreigners before, yet their curiosity was much greater than that of any natives whom we knew were seeing white persons for the first time.

Just before camping the next day we passed through a large village where we were given a most flattering reception. We had stopped to do some shooting and were a considerable distance behind the caravan. The mafus must have announced our coming, for the populace was out en masse to greet us and lined the streets three deep. It was a veritable triumphal entry and crowds of men and children followed us for half a mile outside the town, running beside our horses and staring with saucer-like eyes.

On the second day from Shih-tien we climbed a high mountain and wound down a sharp descent for about 4,000 feet into a valley only 2,300 feet above sea level. We had been cold all day on the ridges exposed to a biting wind and had bundled ourselves into sweaters and coats over flannel shirts. After going down about 1,000 feet we tied our coats to the saddle pockets, on the second thousand stripped off the sweaters, and for the remainder of the descent rode with sleeves rolled up and shirts open at the throat. We had come from midwinter into summer in two hours and the change was most startling. It was as though we had suddenly ridden into an artificially heated building like the rooms for tropical plants at botanical gardens.

Our camp was on a flat plain just above the river where we had a splendid view of the wide valley which was like the bottom of a well with high mountains rising abruptly on all sides. It was a place of strange contrasts. The bushes and trees were in full green foliage but the grass and paddy fields were dry and brown as in midwinter The thick trees at the base of the hills were literally alive with doves but there were few mammal runways and our traps yielded no results. That night a muntjac, the first we had heard, barked hoarsely behind the tents.

The yamen "soldier" who accompanied us from Shih-tien delivered his official dispatch at the village (Ma-po-lo) which lies farther down the valley. The magistrate, who proved to be a Shan native, arrived soon after with ten or twelve men and we discovered that there was but one man in the village who spoke Chinese.

The magistrate at Ma-po-lo by no means wished to have the responsibility of our safety thrust upon him and consequently assured us that there were neither game nor hunters in this village. Although his anxiety to be rid of us was apparent, he was probably telling the truth, for the valley is so highly cultivated (rice), and the cover on the mountainsides so limited, that it is doubtful if much game remains.

In the morning the entire valley was filled with a dense white fog but we climbed out of it almost immediately, and by noon were back again in winter on the summits of the ridges. The country through which we passed en route to Gen-kang was similar to that which had oppressed us during the preceding week—cultivated valleys between high barren mountains relieved here and there by scattered groves of planted fir trees. It was a region utterly hopeless from a naturalist's standpoint and when we arrived at a large town near Gen-kang we were well-nigh discouraged.

During almost a month of travel we had been guided by native information which without exception had proved worthless. It seemed useless to rely upon it further, and yet there was no other alternative, for none of the foreigners whom we had met in Yün-nan knew anything about this part of the province. We were certain to reach a tropical region farther south and the fact that there were a few sambur skins for sale in the market offered slight encouragement. These were said to come from a village called Meng-ting, "a little more far," to the tune of four or five days' travel, over on the Burma frontier.

With gloom in our hearts, which matched that of the weather, we left in a pouring rain on February 5, to slip and splash southward through veritable rivers of mud for two long marches. In the afternoon of the second day the country suddenly changed. The trail led through a wide grassy valley, bordered by heavily forested hills, into a deep ravine. Along the banks of a clear stream the earth was soft and damp and the moss-covered logs and dense vegetation made ideal conditions for small mammalian life.

We rode happily up the ravine and stood in a rocky gateway. At the right a green-clothed mountain rose out of a tangle of luxuriant vegetation; to the left wave after wave of magnificent forested ridges lost themselves in the low hung clouds; at our feet lay a beautiful valley filled with stately trees which spread into a thick green canopy overhead.

We camped in a clearing just at the edge of the forest. While the tents were being pitched, I set a line of traps along the base of the opposite mountain and found a "runway" under almost every log. About eight o'clock I ran my traps and, with the aid of a lantern, stumbled about in the bushes and high grass, over logs and into holes. When I emptied my pockets there were fifteen mice, rats, shrews, and voles, representing seven species and all new to our collection. Heller brought in eight specimens and added two new species. We forthwith decided to stay right where we were until this "gold mine" had been exhausted.

In the morning our traps were full of mammals and sixty-two were laid out on the table ready for skinning. The length, tail, hind foot, and ear of each specimen was first carefully measured in millimeters and recorded in the field catalogue and upon a printed label bearing our serial number; then an incision was made in the belly, the skin stripped off, poisoned with arsenic, stuffed with cotton, and sewed up. The animal was then pinned in position by the feet, nose, and tail in a shallow wooden tray which fitted in the collecting trunk.

The specimens were put in the sun on every bright day until they were thoroughly dry and could be wrapped in cotton and packed in water-tight trunks or boxes. We have found that the regulation U.S. Army officer's fiber trunk makes an ideal collecting case. It measures thirty inches long by thirteen deep and sixteen inches wide and will remain quite dry in an ordinary rain but, of course, must not be allowed to stand in water. The skulls of all specimens, and the skeletons of some, are numbered like the skin, strung upon a wire, and dried in the sun. Also individuals of every species are injected and preserved in formalin for future anatomical study.

Larger specimens are always salted and dried. As soon as the skin has been removed and cleaned of flesh and fat, salt is rubbed into every part of it and the hide rolled up. In the morning it is unwrapped, the water which has been extracted by the salt poured off, and the skin hung over a rope or a tree branch to dry. If it is not too hot and the air is dry, the skin may be kept in the shade to good advantage, but under ordinary field conditions it should be placed in the sun. Before it becomes too hard, the hide is rolled or folded into a convenient package hair side in, tied into shape and allowed to become "bone dry." In this condition it will keep indefinitely but requires constant watching, for the salt absorbs moisture from the air and alternate wetting and drying is fatal.

We soon trained two of our Chinese boys to skin both large and small animals and they became quite expert. They required constant watching, however, and after each hide had been salted either Mr. Heller or I examined it to make sure that it was properly treated.

On our first day in camp we sent for natives to the village of Mu-cheng ten li distant. The men assured us that there were sambur, serow, and muntjac in the neighborhood, and they agreed to hunt. They had no dogs and were armed with crossbows, antiquated guns, and bows and arrows, but they showed us the skins of two sambur in proof of their ability to secure game.

Like most of the other natives, with the exception of the Mosos on the Snow Mountain, these men had no definite plan in hunting. The first day I went out with them they indicated that we were to drive a hill not far from camp. Without giving me an opportunity to reach a position in front of them, they began to work up the hill, and I had a fleeting glimpse of a sambur silhouetted against the sky as it dashed over the summit.

Two days later while I was out with ten other men who had a fairly good pack of dogs, the first party succeeded in killing a female sambur. The animal weighed at least five hundred pounds but they brought it to our camp and we purchased the skin for ten rupees. South of Gen-kang the money of the region, like all of Yün-nan for some distance from the Burma frontier, is the Indian rupee which equals thirty-three cents American gold; in that part of the province adjoining Tonking, French Indo-China money is current.

My Journal of February 8 tells of our life at this camp, which we called "Good Hope."

The weather is delightful for the sun is just warm enough for comfort and the nights are clear and cold. How we do sleep! It seems hardly an hour from the time we go to bed until we hear Wu rousing the servants, and the crackle of the camp-fire outside the tent. We half dress in our sleeping bags and with chattering teeth dash for the fire to lace our high boots in its comfortable warmth.

After breakfast when it is full daylight, my wife and I inspect the traps. The ground is white with frost and the trees and bushes are dressed in silver. Every trap holds an individual interest and we follow the line through the forest, resetting some, and finding new mammals in others. Yvette has conquered her feminine repugnance far enough to remove shrews or mice from the traps by releasing the spring and dropping them on to a broad green leaf, but she never touches them.

We go back to meet the hunters and while I am away with the men, the lady of the camp works at her photography. I return in the late afternoon and after tea we wander through the woods together. It is the most delightful part of the day when the sun goes down and the shadows lengthen. We sit on a log in a small clearing where we can watch the upper branches of a splendid tree. It is the home of a great colony of red-bellied squirrels (Callosciurus erythraeus subsp.) and after a few moments of silence we see a flash of brown along a branch, my gun roars out, and there is a thud upon the ground.

Yvette runs to find the animal and ere the echoes have died away in the forest the gun bangs again. We have already shot a dozen squirrels from this tree and yet more are there. Sometimes a tiny, striped chipmunk (Tamiops macclellandi subsp.) will appear on the lower branches, searching the bark for grubs, and after he falls we have a long hunt to find him in the brown leaves. When it is too dark to see the squirrels, we wander slowly back to camp and eat a dinner of delicious broiled deer steak in front of the fire; over the coffee we smoke and talk of the day's hunting until it is time to "run the traps."

Of all the work we enjoy this most. With lanterns and a gun we pick our way among the trees until we strike the trail along which the traps are set. On the soft ground our feet are noiseless and, extinguishing the lanterns, we sit on a log to listen to the night sounds. The woods are full of life. Almost beside us there is a patter of tiny feet and a scurry among the dry leaves; a muntjac barks hoarsely on the opposite hillside, and a fox yelps behind us in the forest. Suddenly there is a sharp snap, a muffled squeal, and a trap a few yards away has done its work. Even in the tree tops the night life is active. Dead twigs drop to the ground with an unnatural noise, and soft-winged owls show black against the sky as they flit across an opening in the branches.

We light the lanterns again and pass down the trail into a cuplike hollow. Here there are a dozen traps and already half of them are full. In one is a tiny brown shrew caught by the tail as he ran across the trap; another holds a veritable treasure, and at my exclamation of delight Yvette runs up excitedly. It is a rare Insectivore of the genus Hylomys and possibly a species new to science. We examine it beside the lantern, wrap it carefully in paper, and drop it into a pocket by itself.

The next bit of cotton clings to a bush above a mossy log. The trap is gone and for ten minutes we hunt carefully over every inch of ground. Finally my wife discovers it fifteen feet away and stifles a scream for in it, caught by the neck and still alive, is a huge rat nearly two feet long; it too is a species which may prove new.

When the last trap has been examined, we follow the trail to the edge of the forest and into the clearing where the tents glow in the darkness like great yellow pumpkins. Ours is delightfully warmed by the charcoal brazier and, stretched comfortably on the beds, we write our daily records or read Dickens for half an hour. It is with a feeling of great contentment that we slip down into the sleeping bags and blow out the candles leaving the tent filled with the soft glow of the moonlight.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MENG-TING: A VILLAGE OF MANY TONGUES

During the eight days in which we remained at the "Good Hope" camp, two hundred specimens comprising twenty-one species were added to our collection. Although the altitude was still 5,000 feet, the flora was quite unlike that of any region in which we had previously collected, and that undoubtedly was responsible for the complete change of fauna. We were on the very edge of the tropical belt which stretches along the Tonking and Burma frontiers in the extreme south and west of the province.

It was already mid-February and if we were to work in the fever-stricken valleys below 2,000 feet, it was high time we were on the way southward. The information which we had obtained near Gen-kang had been supplemented by the natives of Mu-cheng, and we decided to go to Meng-ting as soon as possible.

The first march was long and uneventful but at its end, from the summit of a high ridge, we could see a wide valley which we reached in the early morning of the second day. The narrow mountain trail abruptly left us on a jutting promontory and wandered uncertainly down a steep ravine to lose itself in a veritable forest of tree ferns and sword grass. The slanting rays of the sun drew long golden paths into the mysterious depths of the mist-filled valley. To the right a giant sentinel peak of granite rose gaunt and naked from out the enveloping sea of green which swelled away to the left in huge ascending billows.

We rested in our saddles until the faint tinkle of the bell on the leading mule announced the approach of the caravan and then we picked our way slowly down the steep trail between walls of tangled vegetation. In an hour we were breathing the moist warm air of the tropics and riding across a wide valley as level as a floor. The long stretches of rank grass, far higher than our heads, were broken by groves of feathery bamboos, banana palms, and splendid trees interlaced with tangled vines.

Near the base of the mountains a Shan village nestled into the grass. The bamboo houses, sheltered by trees and bushes, were roofed in the shape of an overturned boat with thatch and the single street was wide and clean. Could this really be China? Verily, it was a different China from that we had seen before! It might be Burma, India, Java, but never China!

Before the door of a tiny house sat a woman spinning. A real Priscilla, somewhat strange in dress to be sure and with a mouth streaked with betel nut, but Priscilla just the same. And in his proper place beside her stood John Alden. A pair of loose, baggy trousers, hitched far up over one leg to show the intricate tattoo designs beneath, a short coat, and a white turban completed John's attire, but he grasped a gun almost as ancient in design as that of his Pilgrim fathers. Priscilla kept her eyes upon the spinning wheel, but John's gaze could by no stretch of imagination be called ardent even before we appeared around a corner of the house and the pretty picture resolved into its rightful components—a surprised, but not unlovely Shan girl and a well-built, yellow-skinned native who stared with wide brown eyes and open mouth at what must have seemed to him the fancy of a disordered brain.

For into his village, filled with immemorial peace and quiet, where every day was exactly like the day before, had suddenly ridden two big men with white skins and blue eyes, and a little one with lots of hair beneath a broad sun helmet. And almost immediately the little one had jumped from the horse and pointed a black box with a shiny front at him and his Priscilla. At once, but without loss of dignity, Priscilla vanished into the house, but John Alden stood his ground, for a beautiful new tin can had been thrust into his hand and before he had really discovered what it was the little person had smiled at him and turned her attention to the charming street of his village. There the great water buffalos lazily chewed their cuds standing guard over the tiny brown-skinned natives who played trustingly with the calves almost beneath their feet.

Such was our invasion of the first Shan village we had ever seen, and regretfully we rode away across the plain between the walls of waving grass toward the Nam-ting River. Two canoes, each dug out of a single log, and tightly bound together, formed the ferry, but the packs were soon across the muddy stream and the mules were made to swim to the other bank. Shortly after leaving the ferry we emerged from the vast stretches of rank grass on to the open rice paddies which stretched away in a gently undulating plain from the river to the mountains. Strangely enough we saw no ducks or geese, but three great flocks of cranes (probably Grus communis) rose from the fields and wheeled in ever-widening spirals above our heads until they were lost in the blue depths of the sky.

Away in the distance we saw a wooded knoll with a few wisps of smoke curling above its summit, but not until we were well-nigh there did we realize that its beautiful trees sheltered the thatched roofs of Meng-ting. But this was only the "residential section" of the village and below the knoll on the opposite side of a shallow stream lay the shops and markets.

We camped on a dry rice dike where a fringe of jungle separated us from the nearest house. As soon as the tents were up I announced our coming to the mandarin and requested an interview at five o'clock. Wu and I found the yamen to be a large well-built house, delightfully cool and exhibiting several foreign articles which evinced its proximity to Burma.

We were received by a suave Chinese "secretary" who shortly introduced the mandarin—a young Shan not more than twenty years old who only recently had succeeded his late father as chief of the village. The boy was dressed in an exceedingly long frock coat, rather green and frayed about the elbows, which in combination with his otherwise typical native dress gave him a most extraordinary appearance.

We soon discovered that the Chinese secretary who did all the talking was the "power behind the throne." He accepted my gift of a package of tea with great pleasure, but the information about hunting localities for which we asked was not forthcoming. He first said that he knew of a place where there were tiger and leopard, but that he did not dare to reveal it to us for we might be killed by the wild animals and he would be responsible for our deaths; bringing to his attention the fact that tigers had never been recorded from the Meng-ting region did not impress him in the slightest.

It did tend to send him off on another track, however, and he next remarked that if he sent us to a place where the hunting was disappointing we probably would report him to the district mandarin. Assurances to the contrary had no effect. It was perfectly evident that he wished only to get us out of his district and thus relieve himself of the responsibility of our safety. During the conversation, which lasted more than an hour, the young Shan was not consulted and did not speak a word; he sat stolidly in his chair, hardly winking, and except for the constant supply of cigarettes which passed between his fingers there was no evidence that he even breathed.

The interview closed with assurances from the Chinaman that he would make inquiries concerning hunting grounds and communicate with us in the morning. We returned to camp and half an hour later a party of natives arrived from the yamen bearing about one hundred pounds of rice, a sack of potatoes, two dozen eggs, three chickens, and a great bundle of fire wood. These were deposited in front of our tent as gifts from the mandarin.

We were at a loss to account for such generosity until Wu explained that whenever a high official visited a village it was customary for the mandarin to supply his entire party with food during their stay. It would be quite polite to send back all except a few articles, however, for the supplies were levied from the inhabitants of the town. We kept the eggs and chickens, giving the yamen "runners" considerably more than their value in money, and they gratefully returned with the rice and potatoes.

On the hill high above our camp was a large Shan Buddhist monastery, bamboo walled and thatched with straw, and at sunset and daybreak a musical chant of childish voices floated down to us in the mist-filled valley. All day long tiny yellow-robed figures squatted on the mud walls about the temple like a flock of birds peering at us with bright round eyes. They were wild as hawks, these little priests and, although they sometimes left the shelter of their temple walls, they never ventured below the bushy hedge about our rice field.

In the village we saw them often, wandering about the streets or sitting in yellow groups beneath the giant trees which threw a welcome shade over almost every house. They were not all children, and finely built youths or men so old that they seemed like wrinkled bits of lemon peel, passed to and fro to the temple on the hill.

There is no dearth of priests, for every family in the village with male children is required to send at least one boy to live a part of his life under the tutelage of the Church. He must remain three years, and longer, if he wishes. The priests are fed by the monastery, and their clothing is not an important item of expenditure as it consists merely of a straw hat and a yellow robe. They lead a lazy, worthless life, and from their sojourn in religious circles they learn only indolence and idleness.

The day following our arrival in Meng-ting the weekly market was held, and when Wu and I crossed the little stream to the business part of the village, we found ourselves in the midst of the most picturesque crowd of natives it has ever been my fortune to see. It was a group flashing with color, and every individual a study for an artist. There were blue-clad Chinese, Shans with tattooed legs, turbans of pink or white, and Burmans dressed in brilliant purple or green, Las, yellow-skinned Lisos, flat-faced Palaungs, Was, and Kachins in black and red strung about with beads or shells. Long swords hung from the shoulders of those who did not carry a spear or gun, and the hilts of wicked looking daggers peeped from beneath their sashes. Every man carried a weapon ready for instant use.

Nine tribes were present in the market that day and almost as many languages were being spoken. It was a veritable Babel and half the trading was done by signs. The narrow street was choked with goods of every kind spread out upon the ground: fruit, rice, cloth, nails, knives, swords, hats, sandals, skins, horns, baskets, mats, crossbows, arrows, pottery, tea, opium, and scores of other articles for food or household use.

Dozens of natives were arriving and departing, bringing new goods or packing up their purchases; under open, thatched pavilions were silent groups of men gambling with cash or silver, and in the "tea houses" white-faced natives lay stretched upon the couches rolling "pills" of opium and oblivious to the constant stream of passersby.

It was a picturesque, ever changing group, a kaleidoscopic mass of life and color, where Chinese from civilized Canton drank, and gambled, and smoked with wild natives from the hills or from the depths of fever-stricken jungles.

After one glimpse of the picture in the market I dashed back to camp to bring the "Lady of the Camera." On the way I met her, hot and breathless, half coaxing, half driving three bewildered young priests resplendent in yellow robes. All the morning she had been trying vainly to photograph a priest and had discovered these splendid fellows when all her color plates had been exposed. She might have succeeded in bringing them to camp had I not arrived, but they suddenly lost courage and rushed away with averted faces.

When the plate holders were all reloaded we hurried back to the market followed by two coolies with the cameras. Leaving Yvette to do her work alone I set up the cinematograph. Wu was with me and in less than a minute the narrow space in front of us was packed with a seething mass of natives. It was impossible to take a "street scene" for the "street" had suddenly disappeared. Making a virtue of necessity I focused the camera on the irregular line of heads and swung it back and forth registering a variety of facial expressions which it would be hard to duplicate. For some time it was impossible to bribe the natives to stand even for a moment, but after one or two had conquered their fear and been liberally rewarded, there was a rush for places. Wu asked several of the natives who could speak Chinese if they knew what we were doing but they all shook their heads. None of them had ever seen a camera or a photograph.

The Kachin women were the most picturesque of all the tribes as well as the most difficult to photograph. Yvette was not able to get them at all, and I could do so only by strategy. When Wu discovered two or three squatting near their baskets on the ground I moved slowly up behind them keeping in the center of the crowd. After the "movie camera" was in position Wu suddenly "shooed" back the spectators and before the women realized what was happening they were registered on twenty-five or thirty feet of film.

One of the Kachin men, who had drunk too much, suddenly became belligerent when I pointed the camera in his direction, and rushed at me with a drawn knife. I swung for his jaw with my right fist and he went down in a heap. He was more surprised than hurt, I imagine, but it took all of the fight out of him for he received no sympathy from the spectators.

Poor Yvette had a difficult time with her camera operations and a less determined person would have given up in despair. The natives were so shy and suspicious that it was well-nigh impossible to bribe them to stand for a second and it was only after three hours of aggravating work in the stifling heat and dust that she at last succeeded in exposing all her plates. Her patience and determination were really wonderful and I am quite sure that I should not have obtained half her results.

The Kachin women were extraordinary looking individuals. They were short, and strongly built, with a mop of coarse hair cut straight all around, and thick lips stained with betel nut. Their dress consisted of a short black jacket and skirt reaching to the knees, and ornamented with strings of beads and pieces of brass or silver. This tribe forms the largest part of the population in northern Burma and also extends into Assam. Yün-nan is fortunate in having comparatively few of them along its western frontier for they are an uncivilized and quarrelsome race and frequently give the British government considerable trouble.

There were only a few Burmans in the market although the border is hardly a dozen miles to the west, but the girls were especially attractive. Their bright pretty faces seemed always ready to break into a smile and their graceful figures draped in brilliant sarongs were in delightful contrast to the other, not over-clean, natives.

The Burma girls were not chewing betel nut, which added to their distinction. The lips of virtually every other woman and man were stained from the red juice, which is in universal use throughout India, the Malay Peninsula, and the Netherlands Indies. In Yün-nan we first noted it at the "Good Hope" camp, and the Shans are generally addicted to the practice.

The permanent population of Meng-ting is entirely Shan, but during the winter a good many Cantonese Chinamen come to gamble and buy opium. The drug is smuggled across the border very easily and a lucrative trade is carried on. It can be purchased for seventy-five cents (Mexican) an ounce in Burma and sold for two dollars (Mexican) an ounce in Yün-nan Fu and for ten dollars in Shanghai.

Opium is smoked publicly in all the tea houses. The drug is cooked over an alcohol lamp and when the "pill" is properly prepared it is placed in the tiny bowl of the pipe, held against the flame and the smoke inhaled. The process is a rather complicated one and during it the natives always recline. No visible effect is produced even after smoking several pipefuls, but the deathly paleness and expressionless eye marks the inveterate opium user.

There can be no doubt that the Chinese government has been, and is, genuinely anxious to suppress the use of opium and it has succeeded to a remarkable degree. We heard of only one instance of poppy growing in Yün-nan and often met officials, accompanied by a guard of soldiers, on inspection trips. Indeed, while we were in Meng-ting the district mandarin arrived. We were sitting in our tents when the melodious notes of deep-toned gongs floated in through the mist. They were like the chimes of far away cathedral bells sounding nearer and louder, but losing none of the sweetness. Soon a long line of soldiers appeared and passed the camp bearing in their midst a covered chair. The mandarin established himself in a spacious temple on the opposite side of the village, where I visited him the following day and explained the difficulty we had had at the Meng-ting yamen. He aided us so effectually that all opposition to our plans ended and we obtained a guide to take us to a hunting place on the Nam-ting River, three miles from the Burma border.

CHAPTER XXIX

CAMPING ON THE NAM-TING RIVER

Every morning the valley at Meng-ting was filled with a thick white mist and when we broke camp at daylight each mule was swallowed up in the fog as soon as it left the rice field. We followed the sound of the leader's bell, but not until ten o'clock was the entire caravan visible. For thirty li the valley is broad and flat as at Meng-ting and filled with a luxuriant growth of rank grass, but it narrows suddenly where the river has carved its way through a range of hills.

The trail led uncertainly along a steep bank through a dense, tropical jungle. Palms and huge ferns, broad-leaved bananas, and giant trees laced and interlaced with thorny vines and hanging creepers formed a living wall of green as impenetrable as though it were a net of steel. We followed the trail all day, sometimes picking our way among the rocks high above the river or padding along in the soft earth almost at the water's edge. At night we camped in a little clearing where some adventurous native had fought the jungle and been defeated; his bamboo hut was in ruins and the fields were overgrown with a tangle of throttling vegetation.

We had seen no mammals, but the birds along the road were fascinating. Brilliant green parrots screamed in the tree tops and tiny sun-birds dressed in garments of red and gold and purple, flashed across the trail like living jewels. Once we heard a strange whirr and saw a huge hornbill flapping heavily over the river, every beat of his stiff wing feathers sounding like the motor of an airplane. Bamboo partridges called from the bushes and dozens of unfamiliar bird notes filled the air.

At eleven o'clock on the following morning we passed two thatched huts in a little clearing beside the trail and the guide remarked that our camping place was not far away. We reached it shortly and were delighted. Two enormous trees, like great umbrellas, spread a cool, dark shade above a sparkling stream on the edge of an abandoned rice field. From a patch of ground as level as a floor, where our tents were pitched, we could look across the brown rice dykes to the enclosing walls of jungle and up to the green mountain beyond. A half mile farther down the trail, but hidden away in the jungle, lay a picturesque Shan village of a dozen huts, where the guide said we should be able to find hunters.

As soon as tiffin was over we went up the creek with a bag of steel traps to set them on the tiny trails which wound through the jungle in every direction. Selecting a well-beaten patch we buried the trap in the center, covered it carefully with leaves, and suspended the body of a bird or a chunk of meat by a wire over the pan about three feet from the ground. A light branch was fastened to the chain as a "drag." When the trap is pulled this invariably catches in the grass or vines and, while holding the animal firmly, still gives enough "spring" to prevent its freeing itself.

Trapping is exceedingly interesting for it is a contest of wits between the trapper and the animal with the odds by no means in favor of the former. The trap may not be covered in a natural way; the surroundings may be unduly disturbed; a scent of human hands may linger about the bait, or there may be numberless other possibilities to frighten the suspicious animal.

In the evening our guide brought a strange individual whom he introduced as the best hunter in the village. He was a tall Mohammedan Chinese who dressed like a Shan and was married to a Shan woman. He seemed to be afflicted with mental and physical inertia, for when he spoke it was in slow drawl hardly louder than a whisper, and every movement of his body was correspondingly deliberate. We immediately named him the "Dying Rabbit" but discovered very shortly that he really had boundless energy and was an excellent hunter.

The next morning he collected a dozen Shans for beaters and we drove a patch of jungle above camp but without success. There were many sambur tracks in the clearings, but we realized at once that it was going to be difficult to get deer because of the dense cover; the open places were so few and small that a sambur had every chance to break through without giving a shot.

Nearly all the beaters carried guns. The "Dying Rabbit" was armed with a .45-caliber bolt action rifle into which he had managed to fit a .303 shell and several of the men had Winchester carbines, model 1875. The guns had all been brought from Burma and most were without ammunition, but each man had an assortment of different cartridges and used whichever he could force into his rifle.

The men worked splendidly under the direction of the "Dying Rabbit." On the second day they put up a sambur which ran within a hundred feet of us but was absolutely invisible in the high grass. When we returned to camp we found that a civet (Viverra) had walked past our tent and begun to eat the scraps about the cook box, regardless of the shouts of the mafus and servants who were imploring Heller to bring his gun. After considerable difficulty they persuaded him that there really was some cause for their excitement and he shot the animal. It was probably ill, for its flesh was dry and yellow, but the skin was in excellent condition.

Civets belong to the family Viverridae and are found only in Asia and Africa. Although they resemble cats superficially they are not directly related to them and their claws are only partly retractile. They are very beautiful animals with a grayish body spotted with black, a ringed tail, and a black and white striped pointed head. A scent gland near the base of the tail secretes a strong musk-like odor which, although penetrating, is not particularly disagreeable. The animals move about chiefly in the early morning and evening and at night and prey upon birds, eggs, small mammals, fish, and frogs. One which we caught and photographed had a curious habit of raising the hair on the middle of its back from the neck to the tail whenever it was angry or frightened.

Although there were no houses within half a mile of camp we were surprised on our first night to hear cocks crowing in the jungle. The note was like that of the ordinary barnyard bird, except that it ended somewhat more abruptly. The next morning we discovered Chanticleer and all his harem in a deserted rice field, and he flew toward the jungle in a flash of red and gold.

I dropped him and one of his hens with a right and left of "sixes" and found that they were jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) in full plumage. The cock was a splendid bird. The long neck feathers (hackles) spread over his back and wings like a shimmering golden mantle, but it was hardly more beautiful than the black of his underparts and green-glossed tail. Picture to yourself a "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have him in all his glory except that his tail is drooping and he is more pheasant-like in his general bearing. The female was a trim little bird with a lilac sheen to her brown feathers and looked much like a well-kept game bantam hen.

The jungle fowl is the direct ancestor of our barnyard hens and roosters which were probably first domesticated in Burma and adjacent countries long before the dawn of authentic history. According to tradition the Chinese received their poultry from the West about 1400 B. C. and they are figured in Babylonian cylinders between the sixth and seventh centuries B. C. ; although they were probably introduced in Greece through Persia there is no direct evidence as to when and how they reached Europe.

The black-breasted jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) inhabit northern India, Burma, Indo-Chinese countries, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippine Islands; a related species, G. lafayetti, is found in Ceylon; another, G. sonnerati, in southern India, and a fourth, G. varius, in Java.

We found the jungle fowl wild and hard to kill even where they were seldom hunted. During the heat of the day they remain in thick cover, but in cloudy weather and in the early morning and evening they come out into clearings to feed. At our camp on the Nam-ting River we could usually put up a few birds on the edge of the deserted rice fields which stretched up into the jungle, but they were never far away from the edge of the forest.

We sometimes saw single birds of either sex, but usually a cock had with him six or eight hens. It was interesting to watch such a flock feeding in the open. The male, resplendent in his vivid dress, shone like a piece of gold against the dull brown of the dry grass and industriously ran about among his trim little hens, rounding up the stragglers and directing his harem with a few low-toned "clucks" whenever he found some unusually tempting food.

It was his duty, too, to watch for danger and he usually would send the flock whirring into the jungle while they were well beyond shotgun range. When flushed from the open the birds nearly always would alight in the first large tree and sit for a few moments before flying deeper into the jungle. We caught several hens in our steel traps, and one morning at the edge of a swamp I shot a jungle fowl and a woodcock with a "right and left" as they flushed together.

We were at the Nam-ting camp at the beginning of the mating season for the jungle fowl. It is said that they brood from January to April according to locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs under a bamboo clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have been scratched together for a nest. The hen announces the laying of an egg by means of a proud cackle, and the chicks themselves have the characteristic "peep, peep, peep" of the domestic birds. After the breeding season the beautiful red and gold neck hackles of the male sometimes are molted and replaced by short blackish feathers.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the cocks are polygamous, but our observations tend to show that they are. We never saw more than one male in a flock and in only one or two instances were the birds in pairs. The cocks are inveterate fighters like the domestic birds and their long curved spurs are exceedingly effective weapons.

We set a trap for a leopard on a hill behind the Nam-ting River camp and on the second afternoon it contained a splendid polecat. This animal is a member of the family Mustelidae which includes mink, otter, weasels, skunks, and ferrets, and with its brown body, deep yellow throat, and long tail is really very handsome. Polecats inhabit the Northern Hemisphere and are closely allied to the ferret which so often is domesticated and used in hunting rats and rabbits. We found them to be abundant in the low valleys along the Burma border and often saw them during the day running across a jungle path or on the lower branches of a tree. The polecat is a blood-thirsty little beast and kills everything that comes in its way for the pure love of killing, even when its appetite has been satisfied.

On the third morning we found two civets in the traps. The cook told me that some animal had stolen a chicken from one of his boxes during the night and we set a trap only a few yards from our tent on a trail leading into the grass. The civet was evidently the thief for the cook boxes were not bothered again.

Inspecting the traps every morning and evening was a delightful part of our camp life. It was like opening a Christmas package as we walked up the trails, for each one held interesting possibilities and the mammals of the region were so varied that surprises were always in store for us. Besides civets and polecats, we caught mongooses, palm civets, and other carnivores. The small traps yielded a new Hylomys, several new rats, and an interesting shrew.

We saw a few huge squirrels (Ratufa gigantea) and shot one. It was thirty-six inches long, coal black above and yellow below. The animals were very shy and as they climbed about in the highest trees they were by no means easy to see or shoot. They represent an interesting group confined to India, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, the islands of the Dutch East Indies, and Borneo.

CHAPTER XXX

MONKEY HUNTING

Our most exciting sport at the Nam-ting camp was hunting monkeys. Every morning we heard querulous notes which sounded much like the squealing of very young puppies and which were followed by long, siren wails; when the shrill notes had reached their highest pitch they would sink into low mellow tones exceedingly musical.

The calls usually started shortly after daylight and continued until about nine o'clock, or later if the day was dark or rainy. They would be answered from different parts of the jungle and often sounded from half a dozen places simultaneously. The natives assured us that the cries were made by hod-zu (monkeys) and several times we started in pursuit, but they always ceased long before we had found a way through the jungle to the spot from which they came. At last we succeeded in locating the animals.

We were inspecting a line of traps placed along a trail which led up a valley to a wide plateau. Suddenly the puppy-like squealing began, followed by a low tremulous wail. It seemed almost over our heads but the trees were empty. We stole silently along the trail for a hundred yards and turned into a dry creek bed which led up the bottom of the forested ravine. With infinite caution, breathing hard from excitement, we slipped along, scanning the top of every tree. A hornbill sitting on a dead branch caught sight of us and flapped heavily away emitting horrid squawks. A flock of parrots screamed overhead and a red-bellied squirrel followed persistently scolding at the top of its voice, but the monkeys continued to call.

The querulous squealing abruptly ceased and we stood motionless beside a tree. For an instant the countless jungle sounds were hushed in a breathless stillness; then, low and sweet, sounded a moaning wail which swelled into deep full tones. It vibrated an instant, filling all the forest with its richness, and slowly died away. Again and again it floated over the tree tops and we listened strangely moved, for it was like the music of an exquisite contralto voice. At last it ceased but, ere the echoes had reached the valley, the jungle was ringing with an unlovely siren screech.

The spell was broken and we moved on, alert and tense. The trees stretched upward full one hundred and fifty feet, their tops spread out in a leafy roof. Long ropelike vines festooned the upper branches and a luxuriant growth of parasitic vegetation clothed the giant trunks in a swaying mass of living green. Far above the taller trees a gaunt gray monarch of the forest towered in splendid isolation. In its topmost branches we could just discern a dozen balls of yellow fur from which proceeded discordant squeals.

It was long range for a shotgun but the rifles were all in camp. I fired a charge of BBs at the lowest monkey and as the gun roared out the tree tops suddenly sprang into life. They were filled with running, leaping, hairy forms swinging at incredible speed from branch to branch; not a dozen, but a score of monkeys, yellow, brown, and gray.

The one at which I had shot seemed unaffected and threw itself full twenty feet to a horizontal limb, below and to the right. I fired again and he stopped, ran a few steps forward and swung to the underside of the branch. At the third charge he hung suspended by one arm and dropped heavily to the ground stone dead.

We tossed him into the dry creek bed and dashed up the hill where the branches were still swaying as the monkeys traveled through the tree tops. They had a long start and it was a hopeless chase. At every step our clothes were caught by the clinging thorns, our hands were torn, and our faces scratched and bleeding. In ten minutes they had disappeared and we turned about to find the dead animal. Suddenly Yvette saw a splash of leaves in the top of a tree below us and a big brown monkey swung out on a pendent vine. I fired instantly and the animal hung suspended, whirled slowly around and dropped to the ground. Before I had reloaded my gun it gathered itself together and dashed off through the woods on three legs faster than a man could run. The animal had been hiding on a branch and when we passed had tried to steal away undiscovered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The gibbons were exceedingly difficult to kill and would never drop until stone dead. Once I shot an old male with my 6-1/2 mm. Mannlicher rifle at about one hundred yards and, even though the ball had gone clear through his body, he hung for several minutes before he dropped into a tangle of vines.

It was fifteen minutes before we were able to work our way through the jungle to the spot where the animal had fallen, and we had been searching for nearly half an hour when suddenly my wife shouted that a monkey was running along a branch above our heads. I fired with the shotgun at a mass of moving leaves and killed a second gibbon which had been hiding in the thick foliage. Instead of running the animals would sometimes disappear as completely as though they had vanished in the air. After being fooled several times we learned to conceal ourselves in the bushes where we could watch the trees, and sooner or later the monkeys would try to steal away.

The langurs and baboons were by no means as wild as the gibbons and were found in larger herds. Some of the langurs were carrying babies which clung to their mothers between the fore legs and did not seem to impede them in the slightest on their leaps through the tree tops.

The young of this species are bright orange-red and strangely unlike the gray adults. As they grow older the red hair is gradually replaced by gray, but the tail is the last part of the body to change. Heller captured one of the tiny red monkeys and brought it back to camp in his coat pocket. The little fellow was only a few days old, and of course, absolutely helpless.

When it was wrapped in cotton with only its queer little wizened face and blue eyes visible it had a startling resemblance to a human baby until its long tail would suddenly flop into sight and dispel the illusion. It lived only four days in spite of constant care.

There are fifty-five species of langurs (Pygathrix) all of which are confined to the Orient. In some parts of India the animals are sacred and climb about the houses or wander in the streets of villages quite without fear. At times they do so much damage to crops that the natives who do not dare to kill the animals themselves implore foreigners to do so. The langurs are not confined to the tropics, but in the Tibetan mountains range far up into the snow and enjoy the cold weather. In the market at Li-chiang we saw several skins of these animals which had been brought down by the Tibetans; the hair was long and silky and was used by the Chinese for rugs and coats.

The species which we killed at the Nam-ting River camp, like all others of the genus Pygathrix, was interesting because of the long hairs of the head which form a distinct ridge on the occiput. We never heard the animals utter sounds, but it is said that the common Indian langur, Pygathrix entellus, gives a loud whoop as it runs through the tree tops. Often when a tiger is prowling about the jungle the Indian langurs will follow the beast, keeping in the branches just above its head and scolding loudly.

The baboon, or macaque, which we killed on the Nam-ting was a close relative of the species (Macacus rhesus) which one sees parading solemnly about the streets of Calcutta, Bombay, and other Indian cities. In Agra, the home of the beautiful Taj Mahal, the Monkey Temple is visited by every tourist. A large herd of macaques lives in the grounds and at a few chuckling calls from the native attendants will come trooping over the walls for the food which is kept on sale at the gate. These animals are surprisingly tame and make most amusing pets.

On one of our hunts my wife and I discovered a water hole in the midst of a dense jungle where the mud was trodden hard by sambur, muntjac, wild boar, and other animals. We decided to spend a night watching beside it, but the "Dying Rabbit" who was enthusiastic in the day time lost his courage as the sunlight waned. Very doubtfully he consented to go.

Although the trip netted us no tangible results it was an experience of which we often think. We started just at dusk and installed ourselves in the bushes a few yards from the water hole. In half an hour the forest was enveloped in the velvety blackness of the tropic night. Not a star nor a gleam of light was visible and I could not see my hand before my face.

We sat absolutely motionless and listened to the breath of the jungle, which although without definite sound, was vibrant with life. Now and then a muntjac barked hoarsely and the roar of a sambur stag thrilled us like an electric shock. Once a wild boar grunted on the opposite bank of the river, the sound coming to us clear and sharp through the stillness although the animal was far away.

Tiny forest creatures rustled all about us in the leaves and a small animal ran across my wife's lap, leaping frantically down the hill as it felt her move. For five hours we sat there absolutely motionless. Although no animals came to the water hole we were silent with a great happiness as we groped our way back to camp, for we had been close to the heart of the jungle and were thrilled with the mystery of the night.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE SHANS OF THE BURMA BORDER

We saw many Shans at the Nam-ting River, for not only was there a village half a mile beyond our camp, but natives were passing continually along the trail on their way to and from the Burma frontier. The village was named Nam-ka. Its chief was absent when we arrived, but the natives were cordial and agreed to hunt with us; when the head man returned, however, he was most unfriendly. He forbade the villagers from coming to our camp and arguments were of no avail. It soon became evident that only force could change his attitude, and one morning, with all our servants and mafus, we visited his house. He was informed that unless he ceased his opposition and ordered his men to assist us in hunting we would take him to Meng-ting for trial before the mandarin. He grudgingly complied and we had no further trouble.

We found the Shans at Nam-ka to be simple and honest people but abnormally lazy. During our three weeks' stay not a single trap was stolen, although the natives prized them highly, and often brought to us those in which animals had been caught. Shans were continually about our camp where boxes were left unlocked, but not an article of our equipment was missed.

The Nam-ka Shans elevated their houses on six-foot poles and built an open porch in front of the door, while the dwellings at Meng-ting and farther up the valley were all placed upon the ground. The thatched roofs overhung several feet and the sides of the houses were open so that the free passage of air kept them delightfully cool. Moreover, they were surprisingly clean, for the floors were of split bamboo, and the inmates, if they wore sandals, left them at the door. In the center of the single room, on a large flat stone, a small fire always burned, but much of the cooking was done on the porch where a tiny pavilion had been erected over the hearth.

The Shans at Nam-ka had "no visible means of support." The extensive rice paddies indicated that in the past there had been considerable cultivation but the fields were weed-grown and abandoned. The villagers purchased all their vegetables from the Mohammedan hunter and two other Chinese who lived a mile up the trail, or from passing caravans whom they sometimes entertained. In all probability they lived upon the sale of smuggled opium for they were only a few miles from the Burma border.

Virtually every Shan we saw in the south was heavily tattooed. Usually the right leg alone, but sometimes both, were completely covered from the hip to the knee with intricate designs in black or red. The ornamentations often extended entirely around the body over the abdomen and waist, but less frequently on the breast and arms.

All the natives were inordinately proud of these decorations and usually fastened their wide trousers in such a way as to display them to the best advantage. We often could persuade a man to pose before the camera by admiring his tattoo marks and it was most amusing to watch his childlike pleasure.

The Shan tribe is a large one with many subdivisions, and it is probable that at one time it inhabited a large part of China south of the Yangtze River; indeed, there is reason to believe that the Cantonese Chinamen are chiefly of Shan stock, and the facial resemblance between the two races certainly is remarkable.

Although the Shans formerly ruled a vast territory in Yün-nan before its conquest by the Mongol emperors of China in the thirteenth century A. D., and at one time actually subdued Burma and established a dynasty of their own, at present the only independent kingdom of the race is that of Siam. By far the greatest number of Shans live in semi-independent states tributary to Burma, China, and Siam, and in Yün-nan inhabit almost all of the southern valleys below an altitude of 4,000 feet.

The reason that the Chinese allow them to hold such an extent of fertile land is because the low plains are considered unhealthy and the Chinese cannot, or will not, live there. Whether or not the malarial fever of the valleys is so exceedingly deadly remains to be proved, but the Chinese believe it to be so and the result is the same. Where the Shans are numerous enough to have a chief of their own they live in a semi-independent state, for although their head man is subordinate to the district Chinese official, the latter seldom interferes with the internal affairs of the tribe.

The Shans are a short, strongly-built race with a distinct Mongolian type of features and rather fair complexions. Their dress varies decidedly with the region, but the men of the southern part of the province on the Nam-ting River wear a pair of enormous trousers, so baggy that they are almost skirtlike, a white jacket, and a large white or pink turban surmounted by a huge straw hat. The women dress in a white jacket and skirt of either striped or dark blue cloth; their turbans are of similar material and may be worn in a high cylinder, a low oval, or many other shapes according to the particular part of the province in which they live.

CHAPTER XXXII

PRISONERS OF WAR IN BURMA

Y. B. A.

The camp at Nam-ka was a supremely happy one and we left it on March 7, with much regret. Its resources seemed to be almost exhausted and the Mohammedan hunter assured us that at a village called Ma-li-ling we would find excellent shooting. We asked him the distance and he replied, "About a long bamboo joint away." It required three days to get there!

Whether the man had ever been to Ma-li-ling we do not know but we eventually found it to be a tiny village built into the side of a hill in an absolutely barren country where there was not a vestige of cover. Our journey there was not uneventful. We left Nam-ka with high hopes which were somewhat dampened after a day's unsuccessful hunting at the spot where our caravan crossed the Nam-ting River.

With a Shan guide we traveled due north along a good trail which led through dense jungle where there was not a clearing or a sign of life. In the afternoon we noted that the trail bore strongly to the west and ascended rapidly. Soon we had left the jungle and emerged into an absolutely treeless valley between high barren hills. We knew that the Burma frontier could not be far away, and in a few moments we passed a large square "boundary stone"; a hundred yards on the other side the hills were covered with bright green stalks and here and there a field glistened with white poppy blossoms. The guide insisted that we were on the direct road to Ma-li-ling which for the first time he said was in Burma. On our map it was marked well over the border in Chinese territory and we were greatly puzzled.

About six o'clock the brown huts of a village were silhouetted against the sky on a tiny knoll in the midst of a grove of beautiful trees, and we camped at the edge of a water hole. The pool was almost liquid mud, but we were told that it was the only water supply of the village and its cattle. As though to prove the statement a dozen buffalos ambled slowly down the hill, and stood half submerged in the brown liquid, placidly chewing their cuds; meanwhile blue-clad Shan women with buckets in their hands were constantly arriving at the pond for their evening supply of water. We had no filter and it was nauseating to think of drinking the filthy liquid but there was no alternative and after repeated boiling and several strainings we settled it with alum and disguised its taste in tea and soup.

After dinner we questioned the few natives who spoke Chinese, but we became only more and more confused. They knew of no such place as Ma-li-ling and our Shan guide had discreetly disappeared. But they were familiar with the trail to Ma-li-pa, a village farther west in Burma and, moreover, they said that two hundred foreign soldiers were stationed there. We were quite certain that they must be native Indian troops but thought that a white officer might perhaps be in command.

We did not wish to cross the frontier because of possible political difficulties since we had no permits to shoot in Burma, but there seemed to be no alternative, for we were hopelessly bewildered by the mythical Ma-li-ling. We eventually discovered that there were two villages by that name—one in Burma, and the other in China, where it was correctly placed on the map which we were using.

While we were discussing the matter a tremendous altercation arose between the Chinese mafus and the servants. For some time Roy did not interfere, supposing it to be a personal quarrel, but the disturbance at last became unbearable. Calling Wu we learned that because we had been so careful to avoid English territory the mafus had conceived the idea that for some reason we were afraid to meet other foreigners. Since we had inadvertently crossed into Burma it appeared to them that it would be an opportune time to extort an increase of wages. They announced, therefore, that unless extra money was given them at once they would untie the loads and leave us.

They were hardly prepared for what followed, however. Taking his Mannlicher rifle, Roy called the mafus together and told them that if any man touched a load he would begin to shoot the mules and that if they made the slightest resistance the gun would be turned on them. A mafus' mules represent all his property and they did not relish the turn affairs had taken. They subsided at once, but we had the loads guarded during the night. In the morning the mafus were exceedingly surprised when they learned that we were going to Ma-li-pa and their change of front was laughable; they were as humble and anxious to please as they had been belligerent the night before.

The trail led over the same treeless rolling hills through which we had passed on the previous afternoon. There was only one village, but it was surrounded by poppy fields in full blossom. It must be a rather difficult matter for a native living in China near the border to understand why he should not be allowed to produce the lucrative opium while only a few yards away, over an imaginary line, it can be planted without restriction. Poppies seem to grow on hillsides better than on level ground. The plants begin to blossom in late February and the petals, when about to fall, are collected for the purpose of making "leaves" with which to cover the balls of opium. The seed pods which are left after the petals drop off are scarified vertically, at intervals of two or three days, by means of a sharp cutting instrument. The operation is usually performed about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the opium, in the form of dried juice, is collected the next morning. When China, in 1906, forbade the consumption of opium and the growing of poppies, it was estimated that there were from twenty-five to thirty millions of smokers in the Empire.

We reached Ma-li-pa about one o'clock in the afternoon and found it to be a straggling village built on two sides of a deep ravine, with a mixed population of Shans and Chinese. It happened to be the weekly market day and the "bazaar" was crowded. A number of Indian soldiers in khaki were standing about, and I called out to Roy, "I wonder if any of them speak English." Instantly a little fellow approached, with cap in hand, and said, "Yes, Madame, I speak English."

One cannot realize how strange it seemed to hear our own language from a native in this out-of-the-way spot! He was the "compounder," or medical assistant, and told us that the hundred native troops were in charge of a white officer whose house was on the opposite side of the river gorge. He guided us to a temple and, while the mules were being unloaded, in walked a tall, handsome young British officer who introduced himself as Captain Clive. He was almost speechless with surprise at seeing me, for he had not spoken a sentence in English or seen a white person since his arrival at this lonely post five months before.

He asked us at once to come to his quarters for tiffin and we accepted gladly. On the way he gave us our first news of the outside world, for we had been beyond communication of any sort for months, and we learned that the United States had severed diplomatic relations with Germany.

Captain Clive's bungalow was a two-room bamboo house with a broad veranda and thatched with straw. It was delightfully cool and dark after the glare of the yellow sun-baked plains about us, and in perfect order. The care which Britishers take to keep from "letting down" while guarding the frontiers of their vast empire is proverbial, and Captain Clive was a splendid example of the Indian officer. He was as clean-shaved and well-groomed as though he had been expecting us for days and the tiffin to which we sat down was as dainty and well served as it could have been in the midst of civilization.

The great Lord Clive of India was an ancestor of our young officer who had been temporarily detached from his regiment, the 129th Baluchis, and sent on border duty. He was very unhappy, for his brother officers were in active service in East Africa, and he had cried to resign several times, but the Indian government would not release him. When we reached Rangoon some months later we were glad to learn that he had rejoined his regiment and was at the front. Ma-li-pa was a recently established "winter station" and in May would be abandoned when the troop returned to Lashio, ten days' journey away. Comfortable barracks, cook houses, and a hospital had been erected beside a large space which had been cleaned of turf for a parade ground.

Captain Clive was in communication by heliograph with Lashio, at the end of the railroad, and received a résumé of world news two or three times a week. With mirrors during the day and lanterns at night messages were flashed from one mountain top to another and, under favorable conditions, reached Lashio in seven or eight hours.

We pitched our tents a short distance from the barracks in an open field, for there was no available shade. Although Captain Clive was perfectly satisfied with our passports and credentials he could not let us proceed until he had communicated with the Indian government by heliograph. The border was being guarded very closely to prevent German sympathizers from crossing into Burma from China and inciting the native tribes to rebellion.

In December, 1915, a rather serious uprising among the Kachins in the Myitkyina district on the upper waters of the Irawadi River had been incited by a foreigner, I believe, and Clive had assisted in suppressing it. The Indian government was taking no further chances and had given strict orders to arrest and hold anyone, other than a native, who crossed the border from China.

Very fortunately H. B. M. Consul-General Goffe at Yün-nan Fu had communicated with the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma concerning our Expedition and we consequently expected no trouble, but Captain Clive could not let us proceed until he had orders to do so from the Superintendent of the Northern Shan States. Through a delayed message this permission did not reach him for five days and in the meantime we made the most of the limited collecting resources which Ma-li-pa afforded.

Clive ordered his day like all the residents of Burma. He rose at six o'clock and after coffee and rolls had drill for two hours. At half past ten a heavy meal took the place of breakfast and tiffin; tea, with sandwiches and toast, was served at three o'clock, and dinner at eight. His company was composed of several different native tribes, and each religious caste had its own cook and water carrier, for a man of one caste could not prepare meals for men of another. It is an extraordinary system but one which appears to operate perfectly well under the adaptable English government. Certainly one of the great elements in the success of the British as colonizers is their respect for native customs and superstitions!

The company drilled splendidly and we were surprised to hear all commands given in English although none of the men could understand that language. This is done to enable British and Indian troops to maneuver together. Captain Clive, himself, spoke Hindustani to his officers. In the evening the men played football on the parade ground and it seemed as though we had suddenly been transported into civilization on the magic carpet of the Arabian Nights.

Every morning we went shooting at daylight and returned about nine o'clock. Conditions were not favorable for small mammals and although we could undoubtedly have caught a few civets, mongooses, and cats we did not set a line of steel traps for we expected to leave at any time. Our attention was mostly devoted to bird collecting and we obtained about two hundred interesting specimens.

We had our mid-morning meal each day with Captain Clive and he dined with us in the evening. He had brought with him from Lashio a large quantity of supplies and lived almost as well as he could have done at home. Although the days were very warm, the nights were cold and a camp fire was most acceptable.

Captain Clive was on excellent terms with the Chinese authorities and, while we were there, a very old mandarin, blind and infirm, called to present his compliments. He had been an ardent sportsman and was especially interested in our guns; had we been willing to accept the commission he would have paid us the money then and there to purchase for him a Savage .250-.300 rifle like the one we were carrying. The old gentleman always had been very loyal to the British and had received several decorations for his services.

A few days after our arrival a half dead Chinaman crawled into camp with his throat terribly cut. He had been attacked by brigands only a few miles over the border and had just been able to reach Ma-li-pa. The company "compounder" took him in charge and, when Clive asked him about the patient, his evasive answers were most amusing; like all Orientals he would not commit himself to any definite statement because he might "lose face" if his opinion proved to be wrong.

Captain Clive said to him, "Do you think the Chinaman will die?" Looking very judicial the native replied, "Sir, he may die, and yet, he may live." "But," said Clive, "he will probably die, won't he?" "Yes," was the answer, "and yet perhaps he will live." That was all the satisfaction he was able to get.

Clive told us of another native who formerly had been in his company. He had been transferred and one day the Captain met him in Rangoon. When asked if his pay was satisfactory the answer was typical, "Sir, it is good, but not s-o-o good!"

On the afternoon of our fourth day in Ma-li-pa a heliograph from Rangoon announced that "The Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History is especially commended to His Majesty's Indian Government and permission is hereby granted to carry on its work in Burma wherever it may desire." This was only one of the many courtesies which we received from the British.

The morning following the receipt of the heliogram we broke camp at daylight. When the last mule of the caravan had disappeared over the brown hills toward China we regretfully said farewell and rode away. If we are ever again made "prisoners of war" we hope our captor will be as delightful a gentleman as Captain Clive.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HUNTING PEACOCKS ON THE SALWEEN RIVER

From Ma-li-pa we traveled almost due north to the Salween River. The country through which we passed was a succession of dry treeless hills, brown and barren and devoid of animal life. On the evening of the third day we reached the Salween at a ferry a few miles from the village of Changlung where the river begins its great bend to the eastward and sweeps across the border from China into Burma.

The stream has cut a tremendous gorge for itself through the mountains and the sides are so precipitous that the trail doubles back upon itself a dozen times before it reaches the river 3,500 feet below. The upper half of the gorge is bare or thinly patched with trees, but in the lower part the grass is long and rank and a thin dry jungle straggles along the water's edge. The Salween at this point is about two hundred yards wide, but narrows to half that distance below the ferry and flows in a series of rapids between rocky shores.

The valley is devoid of human life except for three boatmen who tend the ferry, but the deserted rice fields along a narrow shelf showed evidence of former cultivation. On the slopes far up the side of the canyon is a Miao village, a tribe which we had not seen before. Probably the valley is too unhealthy for any natives to live close to the water's edge and, even at the time of our visit in early March, the heated air was laden with malaria.

The ferrymen were stupid fellows, half drugged with opium, and assured us that there were no mammals near the river. They admitted that they sometimes heard peacocks and, while our tents were being pitched on a steep sand bank beneath a giant tree, the weird catlike call of a peacock echoed up the valley. It was answered by another farther down the river, and the report of my gun when I fired at a bat brought forth a wild "pe-haun," "pe-haun," "pe-haun" from half a dozen places.

The ferry was a raft built of long bamboo poles lashed together with vines and creepers. It floated just above the surface and was half submerged when loaded. The natives used a most extraordinary contrivance in place of oars. It consisted of a piece of tightly woven bamboo matting three feet long and two feet wide at right angles to which was fastened a six-foot handle. With these the men nonchalantly raked the water toward them from the bow and stern when they had poled the raft well into the current. The invested capital was not extensive, for when the ferry or "propellers" needed repairs a few hours' work in the jungle sufficed to build an entirely new outfit.

All of the peacocks were on the opposite side of the river from our camp where the jungle was thickest. On the first morning my wife and I floated down the river on the raft for half a mile and landed to stalk a peacock which had called frequently from a rocky point near the water's edge. We picked our way through the jungle with the utmost caution but the wary old cock either saw or heard us before we were within range, and I caught just a glimpse of a brilliant green neck as he disappeared into the bushes. A second bird called on a point a half mile farther on, but it refused to come into the open and as we started to stalk it in the jungle we heard a patter of feet among the dry leaves followed by a roar of wings, and saw the bird sail over the tree tops and alight on the summit of a bush-clad hill.

This was the only peacock which we were ever able to flush when it had already gained cover. Usually the birds depend entirely upon their ability to hide or run through the bushes. After several attempts we learned that it was impossible to stalk the peacocks successfully. The jungle was so crisp and parched that the dry leaves crackled at every step and even small birds made a loud noise while scratching on the ground.

The only way to get the peacocks was to watch for them at the river when they came to drink in the early morning and evening. Between two rocky points where we had first seen the birds there was a long curved beach of fine white sand. One morning Heller waited on the point nearest camp while my wife and I posted ourselves under a bush farther down the river. We had been sitting quietly for half an hour when we heard a scratching in the jungle. Thinking it was a peacock feeding we turned our backs to the water and sat motionless peering beneath the bushes. Meanwhile, Heller witnessed an interesting little drama enacted behind us.

An old male peacock with a splendid train stole around the point close to the water, jumped to a high stone within thirty yards of us and stood for a full minute craning its beautiful green neck to get a better view as we kneeled in front of him totally unconscious of his presence. After he had satisfied his curiosity he hopped off the observation pinnacle and, with his body flattened close to the ground, slipped quietly away. It was an excellent example of the stalker being stalked and had Heller not witnessed the scene we should never have known how the clever old bird had fooled us.

The following morning we got a peahen at the same place. Heller had concealed himself in the bushes on one side of the point while I watched the other. Shortly after daylight an old female sailed out of the jungle on set wings and alighted at the water's edge. She saw Heller almost instantly, although he was completely covered by the vines, and started to fly, but he dropped her with a broken wing. Recovering herself, she darted around the rocky point only to meet a charge of BBs from my gun. She was a beautiful bird with a delicate crown of slender feathers, a yellow and blue face patch and a green neck and back, but her plumes were short and inconspicuous when compared with those of the male.

Probably these birds had never before been hunted but they were exceedingly shy and difficult to kill. Although they called more or less during the entire day and we could locate them exactly, they were so far back in the jungle that the crackling of the dry leaves made a stalk impossible. We tried to drive them but were unsuccessful, for the birds would never flush unless they happened to be in the open and cut off from cover. Apparently realizing that their brilliant plumage made them conspicuous objects, the birds relied entirely upon an actual screen of bushes and their wonderful sight and hearing to protect themselves from enemies.

They usually came to the river to drink very early in the morning and just before dusk in the afternoon, but on cloudy days they might appear at almost any hour. If undisturbed they would remain near the water's edge for a considerable time or strut about the sand beach just at the edge of the jungle. At the sound of a gun or any other loud sharp noise the peacocks would answer with their mournful catlike wail, exactly as the domesticated birds will do.

The Chinese believe that the flesh of the peafowl is poison and our servants were horrified when they learned that we intended to eat it. They fully expected that we would not survive the night and, even when they saw we had experienced no ill effects, they could not be persuaded to touch any of it themselves. An old peacock is too tough to eat, but the younger birds are excellent and when stuffed with chestnuts and roasted they are almost the equal of turkey.

The species which we killed on the Salween River is the green peafowl (Pavo munticus) which inhabits Burma, Sumatra, Java, and the Malay Peninsula. Its neck is green, instead of purple, as is that of the common Indian peacock (Pavo cristatus), and it is said that it is the most beautiful bird of the world.

The long ocellated tail coverts called the "train" are dropped about August and the birds assume more simple barred plumes, but the molt is very irregular; usually the full plumage is resumed in March or even earlier. The train is, of course, an ornament to attract the female and, when a cock is strutting about with spread plumes, he sometimes makes a most peculiar rustling sound by vibrating the long feathers.

The eight or ten eggs are laid on the bare ground under a bush in the dense jungle, are dull brownish white and nearly three inches long. The chicks are sometimes domesticated, but even when born in captivity, it is said they are difficult to tame and soon wander away. The birds are omnivorous, feeding on insects, grubs, reptiles, flower buds, young shoots, and grain.

The common peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is a native of India, Ceylon, and Assam. It is held sacred by some religious castes and we saw dozens of the birds wandering about the grounds of the temples in Benares, Agra, and Delhi. Peafowl are said to be rather disagreeable pets because they often attack infirm persons and children and kill young poultry.

In some parts of Ceylon and India the birds are so abundant and easily killed that they do not furnish even passable sport, but in other places they are as wild and difficult to shoot as we found them to be on the Salween River. In India it is a universal belief among sportsmen that wherever peafowls are common, there tiger will be found.

A very beautiful variety which seems to have arisen abruptly in domestication is the so-called "japanned" or black-shouldered peacock named Pavo nigripennis by Mr. Sclater. In some respects it is intermediate between P. munticus and P. cristatus and apparently "breeds true" but never has been found in a wild state. Albino specimens are by no means unusual and are a feature of many zoölogical gardens.

Peacocks have been under domestication for many centuries and are mentioned in the Bible as having been imported into Palestine by Solomon; although the bird is referred to in mythology, the Greeks probably had but little knowledge of it until after the conquests of Alexander.

In the thick jungle only a few hundred yards from our camp on the Salween River I put up a silver pheasant (Euplocamus nycthemerus), one of the earliest known and most beautiful species of the family Phasianidae. Its white mantle, delicately vermiculated with black, extends like a wedding veil over the head, back and tail, in striking contrast to the blue-black underparts, red cheek patches, and red legs.

This bird was formerly pictured in embroidery upon the heart and back badges of the official dresses of civil mandarins to denote the rank of the wearer, and is found only in southern and western China. It is by no means abundant in the parts of Yün-nan which we visited and, moreover, lives in such dense jungle that it is difficult to find. The natives sometimes snare the birds and offer them for sale alive.

We also saw monkeys at our camp on the Salween River, but were not successful in killing any. They were probably the Indian baboon (Macacus rhesus) and, for animals which had not been hunted, were most extraordinarily wild. They were in large herds and sometimes came down to the water to skip and dance along the sand and play among the rocks. The monkeys invariably appeared on the opposite side of the river from us and by the time we hunted up the boatmen and got the clumsy raft to the other shore the baboons had disappeared in the tall grass or were merrily running through the trees up the mountainside

The valley was too dry to be a very productive trapping ground for either small or large mammals, but the birds were interesting and we secured a good many species new to our collection. Jungle fowl were abundant and pigeons exceedingly so, but we saw no ducks along the river and only two cormorants.

Very few natives crossed at the ferry during our stay, for it is a long way from the main road and the climb out of the gorge is too formidable to be undertaken if the Salween can possibly be crossed higher up where the valley is wide and shallow. While we were camped at the river the heat was most uncomfortable during the middle of the day and was but little mitigated by the wind which blew continually. During midsummer the valley at this point must be a veritable furnace and doubtless reeks with fever. We slept under nets at night and in the early evening, while we were watching for peacocks, the mosquitoes were very troublesome.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE GIBBONS OF HO-MU-SHU

It is a long hard climb out of the Salween valley. We left on March 24 and all day crawled up the steep sides on a trail which doubled back and forth upon itself like an endless letter S. From our camp at night the river was just visible as a thin green line several thousand feet below, and for the first time in days, we needed a charcoal fire in our tents.

We were en route to Lung-ling, a town of considerable size, where there was a possibility that mail might be awaiting us in care of the mandarin. Although ordinarily a three days' journey, it was more than four days before we arrived, because I had a sharp attack of malaria shortly after leaving the Salween River and we had to travel half stages.

When we were well out of the valley and at an altitude of 5,000 feet, we arrived at a Chinese town. Its dark evil-smelling houses, jammed together in a crowded mass, and the filthy streets swarming with ragged children and foot-bound women, were in unpleasant contrast to the charming little Shan villages which we had seen in the low country. The inhabitants themselves appeared to no better advantage when compared with their Shan neighbors, for their stares and insolent curiosity were almost unbearable.

The region between the Salween River at Changlung and Lung-ling is as uninteresting to the zoologist as it could possibly be, for the hills are dry and bare and devoid of animal life. Lung-ling is a typical Chinese town except that the streets are wide and it is not as dirty as usual. The mandarin was a jolly rotund little fellow who simulated great sympathy when he informed me that he had received no mail for us. We had left directions to have a runner follow us from Yung-chang and in the event that he did not find our camp to proceed to Lung-ling with the mail. We learned some weeks later that the runner had been frightened by brigands and had turned back long before he reached Meng-ting.

We had heard from our mafus and other natives that black monkeys were to be found on a mountain pass not far from the village of Ho-mu-shu, on the main Yung-chang-Teng-yueh road and, as we were certain that they would prove to be gibbons, we decided to make that our next hunting camp. It was three stages from Lung-ling and, toward evening of the second day, we again descended to the Salween River.

The valley at this point is several miles wide and is so dry that the few shrubs and bushes seem to be parched and barely able to live. At the upper end a picturesque village is set among extensive rice fields. Although a few Chinese live there, its inhabitants are chiefly Shans who are in a transitory state and are gradually adopting Chinese customs. The houses are joined to each other in the Chinese way and are built of mud, thatched with straw. In shape as well as in composition they are quite unlike the dwellings of the southern Shans. The women wore cylindrical turbans, about eighteen inches high, which at a distance looked like silk hats, and the men were dressed in narrow trousers and jackets of Chinese blue. I believe that some of the Shan women also had bound feet but of this I cannot be certain.

We camped on a little knoll under an enormous tree at the far end of the village street, and a short time after the tents were up we had a visit from the Shan magistrate. He was a dapper energetic little fellow wearing foreign dress and quite au courant with foreign ways. He even owned a breech-loading shotgun, and, before we left, sent to ask for shells. He presented us with the usual chickens and I returned several tins of cigarettes. He appeared to be quite a sportsman and directed us to a place on the mountain above the village where he said monkeys were abundant.

We left early in the morning with a guide and, after a hard climb, arrived at a little village near the forest to which the magistrate had directed us. Not only did the natives assure us that they had never seen monkeys but we discovered for ourselves that the only water was more than a mile away, and that camping there was out of the question.

The next day, April 1, we went on to Ho-mu-shu. It is a tiny village built into the mountainside with hardly fifty yards of level ground about it, but commanding a magnificent view over the Salween valley. Although we reached there at half past two in the afternoon the mafus insisted on camping because they swore that there was no water within fifty li up the mountain. Very unwillingly I consented to camp and the next morning found, as usual, that the mafus had lied for there was a splendid camping place with good water not two hours from Ho-mu-shu. It was useless to rage for the Chinese have no scruples about honesty in such small matters, and the head mafu blandly admitted that he knew there was a camping place farther on but that he was tired and wanted to stop early.

As we gained the summit of the ridge we were greeted with a ringing "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa," from the forest five hundred feet below us; they were the calls of gibbons, without a doubt, but strikingly unlike those of the Nam-ting River. We decided to camp at once and, after considerable prospecting, chose a flat place beside the road. It was by no means ideal but had the advantage of giving us an opportunity to hunt from either side of the ridge which for its entire length was scarcely two hundred feet in width. The sides fell away for thousands of feet in steep forest-clad slopes and, as far as our eyes could reach, wave after wave of mountains rolled outward in a great sea of green.

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

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

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

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

We returned to camp with sorrow in our hearts, but two days later we redeemed ourselves and brought in the first new gibbons. We were sitting on a bed of fragrant pine needles watching for a squirrel which had been chattering in the upper branches of a giant tree, when suddenly the wild call of the monkeys echoed up the mountainside

They were far away to the left, and we ran toward them, stumbling and slipping on the moss-covered rocks and logs, the "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa" sounding louder every moment. They seemed almost under us at times and we would stand motionless and silent only to hear the howls die away in the distance. At last we located them on the precipitous side of a deep gorge filled with an impenetrable jungle of palms and thorny plants. It was an impossible place to cross, and we sat down, irresolute and discouraged. In a few moments a chorus of howls broke out and we saw the big black apes swinging along through the trees, two hundred yards away. Finally they stopped and began to feed. They were small marks at that distance but I rested my little Mannlicher on a stump and began to shoot while Yvette watched them with the glasses. One big fellow swung out on a branch and hung with one arm while he picked a cluster of leaves with the other. Yvette saw my first shot cut a twig above his head but he did not move, and at the roar of the second he dropped heavily into the vines below. A brown female ran along the branch a few seconds later and peered down into the jungle where the first monkey had fallen. I covered her carefully with the ivory head of the front sight, pulled the trigger, and she pitched headlong off the tree.

For a few seconds there was silence, then a splash of leaves and three huge black males leaped into full view from the summit of a tall tree. They were silhouetted against a patch of sky and I fired twice in quick succession registering two clean misses. The bullets must have whizzed too close for comfort and they faded instantly into the forest like three black shadows.

For ten minutes we strained our eyes into the dense foliage hoping to catch a glimpse of a swaying branch. Suddenly Yvette heard a rustling in the low tree beneath which we were sitting and seized me violently by the arm, screaming excitedly, "There's one, right above us. Quick, quick, he's going!"

I looked up and could hardly believe my eyes for not twenty feet away hung a huge brown monkey half the size of a man. Almost in a daze I fired with the shotgun. The gibbon stopped, slowly pivoted on one long arm and a pair of eyes blazing like living coals, stared into mine. I fired again point blank as the huge mouth, baring four ugly fangs, opened and emitted a bloodcurdling howl. The monkey slowly swung back again, its arm relaxed and the animal fell at my feet, stone dead.

It was a magnificent old female. By a lucky chance we had chosen, from all the trees in the forest, to sit under the very one in which the gibbon had been hiding and she had tried to steal away unnoticed.

While my wife waited to direct me from the rim of the gorge, I climbed down into the jungle to try and make my way up the opposite side where the other monkeys had fallen. It was dangerous work, for the rocks were covered with a thin layer of earth which supported a dense growth of vegetation. If I tried to let myself down a steep slope by clinging to a thick fern it would almost invariably strip away with a long layer of dirt and send me headlong.

After two bad falls I reached the bottom of the ravine where a mountain torrent leaped and foamed over the rocks and dropped in a beautiful cascade to a pool fifty or sixty feet below. The climb up the opposite side was more difficult than the descent and twice I had to return after finding the way impassable.

A sheer, clean wall almost seventy feet high separated me from the spot where the gibbons had fallen. I skirted the rock face and had laboriously worked my way around and above it when a vine to which I had been clinging stripped off and I began to slide. Faster and faster I went, dragging a mass of ferns and creepers with me, for everything I grasped gave way.

I thought it was the end of things for me because I was hardly ten feet above the precipice which fell away to the jagged rocks of the stream bed in a drop of seventy feet. The rifle slung to my back saved my life. Suddenly it caught on a tiny ragged ledge and held me flattened out against the cliff. But even then I was far from safe, as I realized when I tried to twist about to reach a rope of creepers which swung outward from a bush above my head.

How I managed to crawl back to safety among the trees I can remember only vaguely. I finally got down to the bottom of the canyon, but felt weak and sick and it was half an hour before I could climb up to the place where my wife was waiting. She was already badly frightened for she had not seen me since I left her an hour before and, when I answered her call, she was about to follow into the jungle where I had disappeared. We left the two monkeys to be recovered from above and went slowly back to camp.

The gibbons of Ho-mu-shu are quite unlike those of the Nam-ting River. They represent a well-known species called the "hoolock" (Hylobates hoolock) which is also found in Burma.

The males, both old and young, are coal black with a fringe of white hairs about the face, and the females are light brown. Their note is totally unlike the Nam-ting River gibbons and, instead of sitting quietly in the top of a dead tree to call to their neighbors across the jungle for an hour or two, the hoolocks howl for about twenty minutes as they swing through the branches and are silent during the remainder of the day. They called most frequently on bright mornings and we seldom heard them during cloudy weather.

Apparently they had regular feeding grounds, which were visited every day, but the herds seemed to cover a great deal of territory. Like the gibbons of the Nam-ting River, the hoolocks traveled through the tree tops at almost unbelievable speed, and one of the most amazing things which I have ever witnessed was the way in which they could throw themselves from one tree to another with unerring precision.

On April 5, we received the first mail in nearly three months and our share amounted to 105 letters besides a great quantity of magazines. Wu had ridden to Teng-yueh for us and, as well as the greatly desired mail, had a basket of delicious vegetables and a sheaf of Reuter's cablegrams which were kindly sent by Messrs. Palmer and Abertsen, gentlemen in the employ of the Chinese Customs, who had cared for our mail. Mr. Abertsen also sent a note telling us of a good hunting ground near Teng-yueh.

We spent an entire afternoon and evening over our letters and papers and, through them, began to get in touch with the world again. It is strange how little one misses the morning newspaper once one is beyond its reach and has properly adjusted one's mental perspective. And it is just as strange how essential it all seems immediately one is again within reach of such adjuncts of civilization.

On April 6, we had the first rain for weeks. The water fell in torrents, and the roar, as it drummed upon the tent, was so incessant that we could barely hear each other shout. Because of the long dry spell our camp had not been made with reference to weather and during the night I waked to find that we were in the middle of a pond with fifteen inches of water in the tent. Shoes, clothes, guns, and cameras were soaked, and the surface of the water was only an inch below the bottoms of our cots. This was the beginning of a ten days' rain after which we had six weeks of as delightful weather as one could wish.

CHAPTER XXXV

TENG-YUEH; A LINK WITH CIVILIZATION

After a week on the pass above Ho-mu-shu we shifted camp to a village called Tai-ping-pu, ten miles nearer Teng-yueh on the same road. The ride along the summit of the mountain was a delight, for we passed through grove after grove of rhododendrons in full blossom. The trees were sometimes thirty feet in height and the red flowers glowed like clusters of living coals among their dark green leaves. In the northern part of Yün-nan the rhododendrons grow above other timber line on mountains where it is too high even for spruces.

It rained continually during our stay at Tai-ping-pu. I had another attack of the Salween malaria and for five or six days could do little work. Heller, however, made good use of his time and killed a beautiful horned pheasant, Temmick's tragopan (Ceriornis temmincki), besides half a dozen langurs of the same species as those we had collected on the Nam-ting River. He also was fortunate in shooting one of the huge flying squirrels (Petaurista yunnanensis) which we had hoped to get at Wei-hsi. He saw the animal in the upper branches of a dead tree on the first evening we were in Tai-ping-pu but was not able to get a shot. The next night he watched the same spot and killed the squirrel with a charge of "fours." It measured forty-two and one-quarter inches from the nose to the end of the tail and was a rich mahogany red grizzled with whitish above; the underparts were cream white. As in all flying squirrels, the four legs were connected by a sheet of skin called the "patagium" which is continuous with the body. This acts as a parachute and enables the animal to sail from tree to tree for, of course, it cannot fly like a bat. As these huge squirrels are strictly nocturnal, they are not often seen even by the natives. We were told by the Lutzus on the Mekong River that by building huge fires in the woods they could attract the animals and shoot them with their crossbows.

A few weeks later we purchased a live flying squirrel from a native and kept it for several days in the hope that it might become tame. The animal was exceedingly savage and would grind its teeth angrily and spring at anyone who approached its basket. It could not be tempted to eat or drink and, as it was a valuable specimen, we eventually chloroformed it.

Just below our camp in a pretty little valley a half dozen families of Lisos were living, and we hired the men to hunt for us. They were good-natured fellows, as all the natives of this tribe seem to be, and worked well. One day they brought in a fine muntjac buck which had been killed with their crossbows and poisoned darts. The arrows were about twelve inches long, made of bamboo and "feathered" with a triangular piece of the same wood. Those for shooting birds and squirrels were sharpened to a needle point, but the hunting darts were tipped with steel or iron. The poison they extracted from a plant, which I never saw, and it was said that it takes effect very rapidly.

The muntjac which the Lisos killed had been shot in the side with a single arrow and they assured us that only the flesh immediately surrounding the wound had been spoiled for food. These natives like the Mosos, Lolos, and others carried their darts in a quiver made from the leg skin of a black bear, and none of the men wished to sell their weapons; I finally did obtain a crossbow and quiver for six dollars (Mexican).

Two days before we left Tai-ping-pu, three of the Lisos guided my wife and me to a large cave where they said there was a colony of bats. The cavern was an hour's ride from camp, and proved to be in a difficult and dangerous place in the side of a cliff just above a swift mountain stream. We strung our gill net across the entrance and then sent one of the natives inside to stir up the animals while we caught them as they flew out. In less than half an hour we had twenty-eight big brown bats, but our fingers were cut and bleeding from the vicious bites of their needle-like teeth. They all represented a widely distributed species which we had already obtained at Yün-nan Fu.

From Lung-ling I had sent a runner to Mr. Evans at Ta-li Fu asking him to forward to Teng-yueh the specimens which we had left in his care, and the day following our visit to the bat cave the caravan bearing our cases passed us at Tai-ping-pu. We, ourselves, were about ready to leave and two days later at ten o'clock in the morning we stood on a precipitous mountain summit, gazing down at the beautiful Teng-yueh plain which lay before us like a relief map. It is as flat as a plain well can be and, except where a dozen or more villages cluster on bits of dry land, the valley is one vast watery rice field. Far in the distance, outside the gray city walls, we could see two temple-like buildings surrounded by white-walled compounds, and Wu told us they were the houses of the Customs officials.

Teng-yueh, although only given the rank of a "ting" or second-class Chinese city, is one of the most important places in the province, for it stands as the door to India. All the trade of Burma and Yün-nan flows back and forth through the gates of Teng-yueh, over the great caravan road to Bhamo on the upper Irawadi.

An important post of the Chinese Foreign Customs, which are administered by the British government as security for the Boxer indemnity, is situated in this city, and we were looking forward with the greatest interest to meeting its white population. At the time of our visit the foreigners included Messrs. H. G. Fletcher and Ralph C. Grierson, respectively Acting Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Customs; Messrs. W. R. Palmer and Abertsen, also of the Customs; Mr. Eastes, H. B. M. Consul; Dr. Chang, Indian Medical Officer, and Reverend and Mrs. Embry of the China Inland Mission; Mr. Eastes, accompanied by the resident mandarin, was absent on a three months' opium inspection tour so that we did not meet him.

We reached Teng-yueh on Sunday morning and camped in a temple outside the city walls. Immediately after tiffin we called upon Mr. Grierson and went with him to the Customs House where Messrs. Abertsen and Palmer were living. We found there a Scotch botanist, Mr. Forrest, an old traveler in Yün-nan who was en route to A-tun-zu on a three-year plant-hunting expedition for an English commercial firm. We had heard much of Forrest from Messrs. Kok and Hanna and were especially glad to meet him because of his wide knowledge of the northwestern part of the province. Mr. Forrest was interested chiefly in primroses and rhododendrons, I believe, and in former years obtained a rather remarkable collection of these plants.

From Mr. Grierson we first learned that the United States had declared war on Germany. It had been announced only a week before, and the information had reached Teng-yueh by cable and telegraph almost immediately. It came as welcome news to us Americans who had been vainly endeavoring to justify to ourselves and others our country's lethargy in the face of Teuton insolence, and made us feel that once again we could acknowledge our nationality with the pride we used to feel.

On Monday Mr. Grierson invited us to become his guests and to move our caravan and belongings to his beautiful home. We were charmed with it and our host. The house was built with upturned, temple-like gables, and from his cool verandah we could look across an exquisite flower-filled garden to the blue mountains from which we had had our first view of Teng-yueh the day before. The interior of the dwelling was as attractive as its surroundings, and the beautifully served meals were as varied and dainty as one could have had in the midst of a great city.

Like all Britishers, the Customs men had carried their sport with them. Just beyond the city walls an excellent golf course had been laid out with Chinese graves as bunkers, and there was a cement tennis court behind the Commissioner's house. Mr. Grierson had two excellent polo ponies, besides three trained pointer dogs, and riding and shooting over the beautiful hills gave him an almost ideal life. We found that Mr. Fletcher had a really remarkable selection of records and an excellent Victrola. After dinner, as we listened to the music, we had only to close our eyes and float back to New York and the Metropolitan Opera House on the divine harmony of the sextet from "Lucia" or Caruso's matchless voice. But none of us wished to be there in body for more than a fleeting visit at least, and the music already brought with it a lingering sadness because our days in the free, wild mountains of China were drawing to a close.

During the week we spent with Mr. Grierson we dried and packed all our specimens in tin-lined boxes which were purchased from the agent of the British American Tobacco Company in Teng-yueh. They were just the right size to carry on muleback and, after the birds and mammals had been wrapped in cotton and sprinkled with napthalene, the cases were soldered and made air tight. The most essential thing in sending specimens of any kind through a moist, tropical climate such as India is to have them perfectly dry before the boxes are sealed; otherwise they will arrive at their destination covered with mildew and absolutely ruined.

On the day of our arrival in Teng-yueh we purchased from a native two bear cubs (Ursus tibetanus) about a week old. Each was coal black except for a V-shaped white mark on the breast and a brown nose. When they first came to us they were too young to eat and we fed them diluted condensed milk from a spoon.

The little chaps were as playful as kittens and the story of their amusing ways as they grew older is a book in itself. After a month one of the cubs died, leaving great sorrow in the camp; the other not only lived and flourished but traveled more than 16,000 miles.

He went with us on a pack mule to Bhamo, down the Irawadi River to Rangoon, and across the Bay of Bengal to Calcutta. He then visited many cities in India, and at Bombay boarded the P. & O. S. S. Namur for Hong Kong and became the pet of the ship. From China we took him to Japan, across the Pacific to Vancouver, and finally to our home at Lawrence Park, Bronxville, New York. After an adventurous career as a house pet, when his exploits had made him famous and ourselves disliked by all the neighbors, we regretfully sent him to the National Zoölogical Park, Washington, D. C., where he is living happily at the present time. He was the most delightful little pet we have ever owned and, although now he is nearly a full grown bear, his early life is perpetuated in motion pictures and we can see him still as he came to us the first week. He might well have been the model for the original "Teddy Bear" for he was a round ball of fur, mostly head and ears and sparkling little eyes.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A BIG GAME PARADISE

A few months previous to our arrival, Mr. Abertsen had discovered a splendid hunting ground near the village of Hui-yao, about eighty li from Teng-yueh. He had been shooting rabbits and pheasants and, while passing through the village, the natives told him that a large herd of gnai-yang or "wild goats" lived on the side of a hill through which a branch of the Shweli River had cut a deep gorge.

Although Abertsen was decidedly skeptical as to the accuracy of the report he spent two days hunting and with his shotgun killed two gorals; moreover, he saw twenty-five others. We examined the two skins and realized at once that they represented a different species from those of the Snow Mountain. Therefore, when we left Teng-yueh our first camp was at Hui-yao.

Heller and I started with four natives shortly after daylight. We crossed a tumbledown wooden bridge over the river at a narrow canyon where the sides were straight walls of rock, and followed down the gorge for about two miles. On the way Heller, who was in front, saw two muntjac standing in the grass on an open hillside, and shot the leader. The deer pitched headlong but got to its feet in a few moments and struggled off into the thick cover at the edge of the meadow. It had disappeared before Heller reached the clearing but he saw the second deer, a fine doe, standing on a rock. Although his bullet passed through both lungs the animal ran a quarter of a mile, and he finally discovered her several hours later in the bushes beside the river.

In a short time we reached an open hillside which rose six or seven hundred feet above the river in a steep slope; the opposite side was a sheer wall of rock bordered on the rim by an open pine forest. We separated at this point. Heller, with two natives, keeping near the river, while I climbed up the hill to work along the cliffs half way to the summit.

In less than ten minutes Heller heard a loud snort and, looking up, saw three gorals standing on a ledge seventy-five yards above him. He fired twice but missed and the animals disappeared around a corner of the hill. A few hundred yards farther on he saw a single old ram but his two shots apparently had no effect.

Meanwhile I had continued along the hillside not far from the summit for a mile or more without seeing an animal. Fresh tracks were everywhere and well-cut trails crossed and recrossed among the rocks and grass. I had reached an impassable precipice and was returning across a steep slope when seven gorals jumped out of the grass where they had been lying asleep. I was in a thick grove of pine trees and fired twice in quick succession as the animals appeared through the branches, but missed both times.

I ran out from the trees but the gorals were then nearly two hundred yards away. One big ram had left the herd and was trotting along broadside on. I aimed just in front of him and pulled the trigger as his head appeared in the peep sight. He turned a beautiful somersault and rolled over and over down the hill, finally disappearing in the bushes at the edge of the water.

The other gorals had disappeared, but a few seconds later I saw a small one slowly skirting the rocks on the very summit of the hill. The first shot kicked the dirt beside him, but the second broke his leg and he ran behind a huge boulder. I rested the little Mannlicher on the trunk of a tree, covering the edge of the rock with the ivory head of the front sight and waited. I was perfectly sure that the goral would try to steal out, and in two or three minutes his head appeared. I fired instantly, boring him through both shoulders, and he rolled over and over stone dead lodging against a rock not fifty yards from where we stood.

The two natives were wild with excitement and, yelling at the top of their lungs, ran up the hill like goats to bring the animal down to me. It was a young male in full summer coat, and with horns about two inches long. Our pleasure was somewhat dampened, however, when we went to recover the first goral for we found that when it had landed in the grass at the edge of the river it had either rolled or crawled into the water. We searched along the bank for half a mile but without success and returned to Hui-yao just in time for tiffin.

In the afternoon we shifted camp to a beautiful little grove on the opposite side of the river behind the hunting grounds. Heller, instead of going over with the caravan, went back along the rim of the gorge in the pine forest where he could look across the river to the hill on which we had hunted in the morning. With his field glasses he discovered five gorals in an open meadow, and opened fire. It was long shooting but the animals did not know which way to run, and he killed three of the herd before they disappeared. Our first day had, therefore, netted us one deer and four gorals which was better than at any other camp we had had in China.

We realized from the first day's work that Hui-yao would prove to be a wonderful hunting ground, and the two weeks we spent there justified all our hopes. At other places the cover was so dense or the country so rough that it was necessary to depend entirely upon dogs and untrained natives, but here the animals were on open hillsides where they could be still hunted with success. Moreover, we had an opportunity to learn something about the habits of the animals for we could watch them with glasses from the opposite side of the river when they were quite unconscious of our presence.

There was only one day of our stay at Hui-yao that we did not bring in one or more gorals and even after we had obtained an unrivaled series, dozens were left. Shooting the animals from across the river was rather an unsportsmanlike way of hunting but it was a very effective method of collecting the particular specimens we needed for the Museum series. The distance was so great that the gorals were unable to tell from where the bullets were coming and almost any number of shots might be had before the animals made for cover. It became simply a case of long range target shooting at seldom less than three hundred yards.

Still hunting on the cliffs was quite a different matter, however, and was as good sport as I have ever had. The rocks and open meadow slopes were so precipitous that there was very real danger every moment, for one misstep would send a man rolling hundreds of feet to the bottom where he would inevitably be killed.

The gorals soon learned to lie motionless along the sheerest cliffs or to hide in the rank grass, and it took close work to find them. I used most frequently to ride from camp to the river, send back the horse by a mafu, and work along the face of the rock wall with my two native boys. Their eyesight was wonderful and they often discovered gorals lying among the rocks when I had missed them entirely with my powerful prism binoculars. Their eyes had never been dimmed by study and I suppose were as keen as those of primitive man who possibly hunted gorals or their relatives thousands of years ago over these same hills.

There were many glorious hunts and it would be wearisome were I to describe them all, but one afternoon stands out in my memory above the others. It was a brilliant day, and about four o'clock I rode away from camp, across the rice fields and up the grassy valley to the long sweep of open meadow on the rim of the river gorge.

Sending back the horse, "Achi," my native hunter, and I crawled carefully to a jutting point of rocks and lay face down to inspect the cliffs above and to the left. With my glasses I scanned every inch of the gray wall, but could not discover a sign of life. Glancing at Achi I saw him gazing intently at the rock which I had just examined, and in a moment he whispered excitedly "gnai-yang." By putting both hands to the side of his head he indicated that the animal was lying down, and although he pointed with my rifle, it was full five minutes before I could discover the goral flat upon his belly against the cliff, with head stretched out, and fore legs doubled beneath his body. He was sound asleep in the sun and looked as though he might remain forever.

By signs Achi indicated that we were to climb up above and circle around the cliff to a ragged promontory which jutted into space within a hundred yards of the animal. It was a good three quarters of an hour before we peered cautiously between two rocks opposite the ledge where the goral had been asleep. The animal was gone. We looked at each other in blank amazement and then began a survey of the ground below.

Halfway down the mountainside Achi discovered the ram feeding in an open meadow and we began at once to make our way down the face of the cliff. It was dangerous going, but we gained the meadow in safety and worked cautiously up to a grassy ridge where the goral had been standing. Again we crawled like snakes among the rocks and again an empty slope of waving grass met our eyes. The goral had disappeared, and even Achi could not discover a sign of life upon the meadow.

With an exclamation of disgust I got to my feet and looked around. Instantly there was a rattle of stones and a huge goral leaped out of the grass thirty yards away and dashed up the hill. I threw up my rifle and shot hurriedly, chipping a bit of rock a foot behind the animal. Swearing softly at my carelessness, I threw in another shell, selected a spot in front of the ram, and fired. The splendid animal sank in its tracks without a quiver, shot through the base of the neck.

I had just ejected the empty shell when Achi seized me by the arm, whispering "gnai-yang, gnai-yang, gnai-yang, na, na, na, na," and pointing to the cliffs two hundred yards above us. I looked up just in time to see another goral flash behind a rock on the very summit of the ridge. An instant later he appeared again and stopped broadside on with his noble head thrown up, silhouetted against the sky. It was a perfect target and, resting my rifle on a flat rock, I covered the animal with the white bead and centered it in the rear sight. As I touched the hair trigger and the roar of the high-power shell crashed back from the face of the cliff, the animal leaped with legs straight out, whirling over and over down the meadow and bringing up against a boulder not twenty yards from the first goral.

That night as I walked over the hills in the cool dusk I would not have changed my lot with any man on earth. The breathless excitement of the stalk and the wild thrill of exultation at the clean kill of two splendid rams were still rioting in my veins. I came out of the valley and across the rice fields to the blazing camp fire. Yvette ran to the edge of the grove, her hands filled with wet photographic negatives. "How many?" she called. "Two," I answered, "and both big ones. How many for you?" "Fourteen color plates," she sung back happily, "and all good."

CHAPTER XXXVII

SEROW AND SAMBUR

We had a delightful visit from Mr. Grierson during our first week in camp. He rode out on Thursday afternoon and remained until Sunday, bringing us mail, war news, and fresh vegetables, and returning with goral meat for all the foreigners in Teng-yueh. On the afternoon of his visit I had killed three monkeys which represented a different species from any we had obtained before. They were the Indian baboon (Macacus rhesus) and were probably like those of the Salween River at Changlung.

I found two great troupes of the monkeys running along the opposite river bank. The first herd was climbing up the almost perpendicular rock walls, swinging on the bushes and sometimes almost disappearing in the tufts of grass. I could not approach nearer than one hundred and fifty yards and did some very bad shooting at the little beasts, but a running monkey at that distance is a pretty uncertain mark, and it requires a much better shot than I am to register more hits than misses. I did kill two, but both dropped into the river and promptly sank, so that I gave it up.

Less than a half mile farther on another and larger troupe appeared among the boulders just at the water's edge. Profiting by my experience, I kept out of sight among the bushes and watched the animals play about until one hopped to a rock and sat quietly for an instant. I got six in this way, but we were able to recover only three of them from the water.

Heller shot three muntjac at Hui-yao, besides the doe which he killed on the first day. One of the largest bucks had a pair of beautiful antlers three and one half inches long from the burr to the tip. The skin-covered projections, or pedicels, of the frontal bone, from the summits of which the antlers grow, measured two and one-half inches from the skull to the burrs. Evidently the muntjac are somewhat irregular in shedding for, although they were all in full summer pelage, two already had lost their antlers while the other had not. I can think of no more delicious meat than the flesh of these little deer and they seem to be as highly esteemed by the English sportsmen of India as they are by the foreigners of China.

I did not see a muntjac while at Hui-yao, but was fortunate in killing a splendid coal-black serow which represents a sub-species new to science; although the natives said that serow were known to occur in the thick jungle on the south side of the river, none had been seen for years. Heller and I had gone to this part of the gorge to hunt for a troupe of monkeys which he had located on the previous day. We had separated, Heller keeping close to the water while I skirted the cliffs near the summit not far from the road which led through the pine forest.

I was walking just under the rim of the gorge when suddenly with a snort a large animal dashed out of a thicket below and to the left. I caught a glimpse of a great coal-black body and a pair of short curved horns as the beast disappeared in a shallow gully, and realized that it was a serow. A few seconds later it reappeared, running directly away from me along the upper edge of the gorge. I fired and the animal dropped, gave a convulsive twist, rolled over, and plunged into the canyon

As the serow disappeared we heard a chorus of excited yells from below, and it was evident that some natives near the water had seen it fall. I had slight hope that they might have rescued it from the river, but my heart was heavy as we worked along the cliff trying to find a place where it was possible to descend. A wood cutter whom we discovered a short distance away guided us down a trail so steep that it seemed impossible for a human being to walk along it, and in proof I slid the last half of the way to the rocks at the river's edge, narrowly escaping a broken neck.

When we reached the stream it was only to find a flat wall against which the water surged in a mass of white foam, separating us from the place where the serow had fallen. I tried to wade around the rock but in two steps the water was above my waist. It was evident that we would have to swim, and I began to undress, inviting Achi and the wood cutter to follow; the former refused, but the latter pulled off his few clothes with considerable hesitation.

It was a swim of only about forty feet around the face of the cliff but the current was strong and it was no easy matter to fight my way to the other side. After I had climbed out upon the rocks I called to the wood cutter to follow and he slipped into the water. Evidently the current was more than he had bargained for and a look of fear crossed his face, but he went manfully at it.

He had almost reached the rock on which I was standing with outstretched hand when his strength seemed suddenly to go and he cried out in terror. I jumped into the water, hanging to the rocks with one hand and letting my legs float out behind. The wood cutter just managed to reach my big toe, to which he clung as if it had in reality been the straw of the drowning man and I dragged him up stream until, to my intense relief, he could grasp the rocks.

We picked our way among the boulders for a few yards and suddenly came upon the serow lying partly in the water. I felt like dancing with delight but the sharp rocks were not conducive to any such demonstrations and I merely yelled to Achi who understood from the tone, if not from my words, that the animal was safe.

The men who had shouted when the animal fell over the cliff were only fifty feet away, but they too were separated from it by a wall of rock and surging water. They said that there was an easier way up the cliff than the one by which we had descended, and prepared a line of tough vines, one end of which they let down to us. We made it fast to the serow and I kept a second vine rope in my hands, swimming beside the animal as they dragged it to the other shore. It was landed safely and the wood cutter was hauled over by the same means.

I had intended to swim back for my clothes but discovered that Achi had disappeared, taking my garments and those of the wood cutter with him. He evidently intended to meet us on the hilltop, but it left us in the rather awkward predicament of making our way through the thick brush with only the proverbial smile and minus even the necktie.

The men fastened together the serow's four legs, slipped a pole beneath them and toiled up the steep slope preceded by a naked brown figure and followed by a white one. The side of the gorge was covered with vines and creepers, many of them thorny, and pushing through them with no bodily protection was far from comfortable.

When we arrived at the road on the rim of the gorge I was dismayed to find that Achi was not there with my clothes. The wood cutter did not appear to be greatly worried and indicated that we would find him farther up the road. I walked on dubiously, expecting every second to meet some person, and sure enough, a Chinese woman suddenly appeared over a little hill. I dived into the tall ferns beside the road, burrowing like a rabbit, and from the frightened way in which she hurried past, she must have thought she had seen one of her ancestral spirits stalking abroad. We eventually found the boy, and, decently dressed, I faced the world again with confidence and happiness.

On the way back to camp we saw a goral on the cliffs across the river. It was high up and fully three hundred and fifty yards away but, of course, quite unconscious of our presence. My first two shots struck close beside the animal, but at the third it rolled over and over down the hill, lodging among the rocks just above the river.

Our entry into camp was triumphal, for fully half the village acted as an escort to the serow, an animal which few had ever seen. It was a female, and probably weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. The mane was short and black and strikingly unlike the long white manes of the Snow Mountain serows; the horns were almost smooth. Getting this specimen was one of the lucky chances which sometimes come to a sportsman, for one might hunt for weeks in the same place without ever seeing another serow, as the jungle is exceedingly dense and the cliffs so steep that it is impossible to walk except in a few spots. The animal had been feeding on the new grass just at the edge of the heavy cover and probably had been sleeping under a bush when she was disturbed.

Besides mammals and birds we made a fairly good collection of reptiles and lizards at Hui-yao, but in all other parts of the province which we visited they were exceedingly scarce. In fact, I have never been in a place where there were so few reptiles and batrachians. We obtained only one species of poisonous snake here. It was a small green viper which we sometimes saw coiled on a low bush watching mouse holes in the grass. Several species of nonpoisonous snakes were more common but were nowhere really abundant.

We left Hui-yao the day after I killed the serow for a village called Wa-tien where there was a report of sambur. None of us had any real hope of finding the huge deer after our former unsuccessful hunts, but we camped in the early afternoon on an open hilltop five miles from Wa-tien where the natives assured us the animals often came to eat the young rice during the night.

We engaged four men with three dogs as hunters, but awoke to find a dense fog blanketing the valley and mountains. It was not until half past nine that the gray mist yielded to the sun and left the hills clear enough for us to hunt. We climbed a wooded ridge directly behind the camp and skirted the edge of a heavily forested ravine which the men wished to drive.

Heller took a position in a bean field while I climbed to a sharp ridge above and beyond him. In less than half an hour the dogs began to yelp in an uncertain way. I saw one of them running down hill, nose to the ground, and a few seconds later Heller fired twice in quick succession. Two sambur had skirted the edge of the wood less than one hundred yards away, but he had missed with both shots.

The trail led into a deep ravine filled with dense underbrush. In a few moments the dogs began to yelp again and, while Heller remained on the hillside to watch the open fields, I followed the hounds along the creek bed. Suddenly the whiplike crack of his Savage 250-300 rifle sounded five times in quick succession just above our heads, and we climbed hurriedly out of the gorge.

Heller shouted that he had fired at a huge sambur running along the edge of a bean field but the animal showed no sign of being hit. We easily picked up the trail in the soft earth and in a few moments found several drops of blood, showing that at least one bullet had found its mark. The blood soon ceased and we began to wonder if the sambur had not been merely scratched.

Heller had seen the deer disappear in a second ravine, a branch of the one out of which it had first been driven, and while he watched the upper side I worked my way to the bottom to look for tracks. A few moments later the natives began to shout excitedly just above me, and Heller called out that they had found the deer, which was lying stone dead half way down the side of the gorge in a mass of thick ferns. The sambur had been hit only once but the powerful Savage bullet had crashed through the shoulder into the lungs; it was quite sufficient to do the work even on such a huge animal and the deer had run less than one hundred yards from the place where it had been shot.

It was a splendid male, carrying a magnificent pair of antlers which measured twenty-seven inches in length. The deer was about the size of an American wapiti, or elk, and must have weighed at least seven hundred pounds, for it required eight men to lift it. The Chinese hunters were wild with excitement, but especially so when we began to eviscerate the animal, for they wished to save the blood which is considered of great medicinal value. They filled caps, sacks, bamboo joints, and every receptacle which they could find after each man had drunk all he could possibly force down his throat and had eaten the huge clots which choked the thorax.

When the sambur was brought to camp a regular orgy was held by our servants, mafus, and dozens of villagers who gathered to buy, beg, or steal some of the blood. Our interpreter, Wu, took the heart as his perquisite, carefully extracted the blood, and dried it in a basin. The liver also seemed to be an especial desideratum, and in fact every part of the viscera was saved. Because the antlers were hard they were not considered of especial value, but had they been in the velvet we should have had to guard them closely; then they would have been worth about one hundred dollars (Mexican).

We expected from our easy hunt of the morning that it would not be difficult to get sambur, and indeed, Heller did see another in the afternoon but failed to kill it. Unfortunately, a relative of one of the hunters died suddenly during the night and all the men went off with their dogs to the burial feast which lasted several days, and we were not able to find any other good hounds.

There were undoubtedly several sambur in the vicinity of our camp but they fed entirely during the night and spent the day in such thick cover that it was impossible to drive them out except with good beaters or dogs. We hunted faithfully every morning and afternoon but did not get another shot and, after a week, moved camp to the base of a great mountain range six miles away near a Liso village.

The scenery in this region is magnificent. The mountain range is the same on which we hunted at Ho-mu-shu and reaches a height of 11,000 feet near Wa-tien. It is wild and uninhabited, and the splendid forests must shelter a good deal of game.

The foothills on which we were camped are low wooded ridges rising out of open cultivated valleys, which often run into the jungle-filled ravines in which the sambur sleep. Why the deer should occur in this particular region and not in the neighboring country is a mystery unless it is the proximity of the great forested mountain range. But in similar places only a few miles away, where there is an abundance of cover, the natives said the animals had never been seen, and neither were they known on the opposite side of the mountain range where the Teng-yueh—Tali-Fu road crosses the Salween valley.

On May 20, we started back to Hui-yao to spend three or four days hunting monkeys before we returned to Teng-yueh to pack our specimens and end the field work of the Expedition. On the way my wife and I became separated from the caravan but as we had one of our servants for a guide we were not uneasy.

The man was a lazy, stupid fellow named Le Ping-sang (which we had changed to "Leaping Frog" because he never did leap for any cause whatever), and before long he had us hopelessly lost.

It would appear easy enough to ask the way from the natives, but the Chinese are so suspicious that they often will intentionally misdirect a stranger. They do not know what business the inquirer may have in the village to which he wishes to go and therefore, just on general principles, they send him off in the wrong direction.

Apparently this is what happened to us, for a farmer of whom we inquired the way directed us to a road at nearly right angles to the one we should have taken, and it was late in the afternoon before we finally found the caravan.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

LAST DAYS IN CHINA

It was of paramount importance to pack our specimens before the beginning of the summer rains. They might be expected to break in full violence any day after June 1, and when they really began it would be impossible to get our boxes to Bhamo, for virtually all caravan travel ceases during the wet season. Therefore our second stay at Hui-yao was short and we returned to Teng-yueh on May 24, ending the active field work of the Expedition exactly a year from the time it began with our trip up the Min River to Yeng-ping in Fukien Province.

Mr. Grierson had kindly invited us again to become his guests and no place ever seemed more delightful, after our hot and dusty ride, than his beautiful garden and cool, shady verandah where a dainty tea was served. Our days in Teng-yueh were busy ones, for after the specimens were packed and the boxes sealed it was necessary to wrap them in waterproof covers; moreover, the equipment had to be sorted and sold or discarded, a caravan engaged, and nearly a thousand feet of motion-picture film developed. This was done in the spacious dark room connected with Mr. Grierson's house which offered a welcome change from the cramped quarters of the tent which we had used for so many months.

Much of the success of our motion film lay in the fact that it was developed within a short time after exposure, for had we attempted to bring or send it to Shanghai, the nearest city with facilities for doing such work, it would inevitably have been ruined by the climatic changes. Although cinematograph photography requires an elaborate and expensive outfit and is a source of endless work, nevertheless, the value of an actual moving record of the life of such remote regions is worth all the trouble it entails.

The Paget natural color plates proved to be eminently satisfactory and were among the most interesting results of the expedition. The stereoscopic effects and the faithful reproduction of the delicate atmospheric shading in the photographs are remarkable. Although the plates had been subjected to a variety of climatic conditions and temperatures by the time the last ones were exposed in Burma, a year and a half after their manufacture, they showed no signs of deterioration even when the ordinary negatives which we brought with us from America had been ruined. The other photographs, some of which are reproduced in this book, speak for themselves.

The entire collections of the Expedition were packed in forty-one cases and included the following specimens:

2,100 mammals
800 birds
200 reptiles and batrachians
200 skeletons and formalin preparations for anatomical study
150 Paget natural color plates
500 photographic negatives
10,000 feet of motion-picture film.

Since the Expedition was organized primarily for the study of the mammalian fauna and its distribution, our efforts were directed very largely toward this branch of science, and other specimens were gathered only when conditions were especially favorable. I believe that the mammal collection is the most extensive ever taken from China by a single continuous expedition, and a large percentage undoubtedly will prove to represent species new to science. Our tents were pitched in 108 different spots from 15,000 feet to 1,400 feet above sea level, and because of this range in altitudes, the fauna represented by our specimens is remarkably varied. Moreover, during our nine months in Yün-nan we spent 115 days in the saddle, riding 2,000 miles on horse or mule back, largely over small roads or trails in little known parts of the province.

In Teng-yueh we were entertained most hospitably and the leisure hours were made delightful by golf, tennis, riding, and dinners. Mr. Grierson was a charming host who placed himself, as well as his house and servants, at our disposal, utter strangers though we were, and we shall never forget his welcome.

We decided to take four man-chairs to Bhamo because of the rain which was expected every day, and the coolies made us very comfortable upon our sleeping bags which were swung between two bamboo poles and covered with a strip of yellow oil-cloth. They were the regulation Chinese "mountain schooner," at which we had so often laughed, but they proved to be infinitely more desirable than riding in the rain.

With the forty-one cases of specimens we left Teng-yueh on June 1, behind a caravan of thirty mules for the eight-day journey to Bhamo on the outskirts of civilization. Our chair-coolies were miserable specimens of humanity. They were from S'suchuan Province and were all unmarried which alone is almost a crime in China. Every cent of money, earned by the hardest sort of work, they spent in drinking, gambling, and smoking opium. As Wu tersely put it "they make how much—spend how much!"

About every two hours they would deposit us unceremoniously in the midst of a filthy village and disappear into some dark den in spite of our remonstrances. We would grumble and fume and finally, getting out of our chairs, peer into the hole. In the half light we would see them huddled on a "kang" over tiny yellow flames sucking at their pipes. At tiffin each one would stretch out under a tree with a stone for a pillow and his broad straw hat propped up to screen him from the wind. With infinite care he would extract a few black grains from a dirty box, mix them with a little water, and cook them over an alcohol lamp until the opium bubbled and was almost ready to drop. Then placing it lovingly in the bowl of his pipe he would hold it against the flame and draw in long breaths of the sickly-sweet smoke. The men could work all day without food, but opium was a prime necessity.

It was almost impossible to start them in the morning and it became my regular duty to make the rounds of the filthy holes in which they slept, seize them by the collars and drag them into the street. Force made the only appeal to their deadened senses and we were heartily sick of them before we reached Bhamo.

The road to Bhamo is a gradual descent from five thousand feet to almost sea level. Because of the fever the valleys are largely inhabited by "Chinese Shans" who differ in dress and customs from the Southern Shans of the Nam-ting River. Few of the men were tattooed and the women all wore the enormous cylindrical turban which we had seen once before in the Salween Valley.

At noon of the fifth day we crossed the Yün-nan border into Burma. It is a beautiful spot where a foaming mountain torrent rushes out of the jungle in a series of picturesque cascades and loses itself in a living wall of green. The stream is spanned by a splendid iron bridge from which a fine wide road of crushed stone leads all the way to Bhamo.

What a difference between the country we were leaving and the one we were about to enter! It is the "deadly parallel" of the old East and the new West. On the one side is China with her flooded roads and bridges of rotting timber, the outward and visible signs of a nation still living in the Middle Ages, fighting progress, shackled by the iron doctrines of Confucius to the long dead past. Across the river is English Burma, with eyes turned forward, ever watchful of the welfare of her people, her iron bridges and macadam roads representing the very essence of modern thought and progress.

With paternal care of her officials the British government has provided dâk (mail) bungalows at the end of each day's journey which are open to every foreign traveler. They are comfortable little houses set on piles. Each one has a spacious living room, with a large teakwood table and inviting lounge chairs. In a corner stands a cabinet of cutlery, china, and glass, all clean and in perfect order. The two bedrooms are provided with adjoining baths and a covered passageway connects the kitchen with the house. All is ready for the tired traveler, and a boy can be hired for a trifling sum to make the punkah "punk." Such comforts can only be appreciated when one has journeyed for months in a country where they do not exist.

Our last night on the road was spent at a dâk bungalow near a village only a few miles from Bhamo. We were seated at the window, when, with a rattle of wheels, the first cart we had seen in nine months passed by. That cart brought to us more forcibly than any other thing a realization that the Expedition was ended and that we were standing on the threshold of civilization.

As Yvette turned from the window her eyes were wet with unshed tears, and a lump had risen in my throat. Not all the pleasures of the city, the love of friends or relatives, could make us wish to end the wild, free life of the year gone by. Silently we left the house and walked across the sunlit road into a grove of graceful, drooping palms; a white pagoda gleamed between the trees, and the pungent odor of wood smoke filled the air.

The spot was redolent with the atmosphere of the lazy East; the East which, like the fabled "Lorelei," weaves a mystic spell about the wanderer whom she has loved and taken to her heart, while yet he feels it not. And when he would cast her off and return to his own again she knows full well that her subtle charm will bring him back once more.


The next morning we entered Bhamo. It is a city of low, cool houses, wide lawns and tree-decked streets built on the bank of the muddy Irawadi River. Only a few miles away the railroad reaches Katha, and palatial steamers run to Mandalay and Rangoon. We called upon Mr. Farmer, the Deputy Commissioner, who offered the hospitality of the "Circuit House" and in the evening took us with him to the Club.

A military band was playing and men in white, well-dressed women, and officers in uniform strolled about or sipped iced drinks beside the tennis court. We felt strange and shy but doubtless we seemed more strange to them for we were newly come from a far country which they saw only as a mystic, unknown land.

On June 9, at noon, we embarked for the 1,200-mile journey to Rangoon, exactly nine months after we had ridden away from Yün-nan Fu toward the Mountain of Eternal Snow. Our further travels need not be related here. When we reached civilization we expected that our transport difficulties were ended; instead they had only begun. India was well-nigh isolated from the Pacific and to expose our valuable collection to the attacks of German pirates in the Mediterranean and Atlantic was not to be considered even though it necessitated traveling two thirds around the world to reach America safely.

We left Rangoon for Calcutta, crossed India with all our baggage to Bombay, and after a seemingly endless wait eventually succeeded in arriving at Hong Kong by way of Singapore. There we separated from our faithful Wu and sent him to his home in Foochow. It was hard to say "good-by" to Wu, for his efficient service, his enthusiastic interest in the work of the Expedition, and, above all, his willingness to do whatever needed to be done, had won our gratitude and affection. We ourselves went northward to Japan, across the Pacific to Vancouver, and overland to New York, arriving on October 1, 1917, nearly nineteen months from the time we left. We were never separated from our collections for, had we left them, I doubt if they would ever have reached America. It was difficult enough to gather them in the field, but infinitely more so to guide the forty-one cases through the tangled shipping net of a war-mad world.

They reached New York without the loss of a single specimen and are now being prepared in the American Museum of Natural History for the study which will place the scientific results of the Asiatic Zoölogical Expedition before the public.


The story of our travels is at an end. Once more we are indefinable units in a vast work-a-day world, bound by the iron chains of convention to the customs of civilized men and things. The glorious days in our beloved East are gone, and yet, to us, the Orient seems not far away, for the miles of land and water can be traversed in a thought. Again we stand before our tent with the fragrant breath of the pines about us, watching the glistening peaks of the Snow Mountain turn purple and gold in the setting sun; again, we feel the mystic spell of the jungle, or hear the low, sweet tones of a gibbon's call. We have only to shut our eyes to bring back a picture of the bleak barriers of the Forbidden Land or the sunlit streets of a Burma village. Thank God, we saw it all together and such blessed memories can never die.

PART ONE

PART TWO