Camps and Trails in China Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI

THE SNOW MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

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

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

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

The first serow was killed by Hotenfa's party on our third day in the temple. h.e.l.ler went out with the hunters but in a few hours returned alone.

A short time after he had left the natives the dogs took up the trail of a huge serow and followed it for three miles through the spruce forest. They finally brought the animal to bay against a cliff and a furious fight ensued. One dog was ripped wide open, another received a horn-thrust in the side, and the big red leader was thrown over a cliff to the rocks below.

More of the hounds undoubtedly would have been killed had not the hunters arrived and shot the animal.

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

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

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

November 2, the sun rose in an absolutely cloudless sky and during the remainder of the winter we had as perfect weather as one could wish.

Yvette's constant nursing and efficient surgery combined with the devotion of our interpreter, Wu, had checked the spread of the poison in my hand and my nights were no longer haunted with the strange fancies of delirium, but I was as helpless as a babe. I could do nothing but sit with steaming cloths wrapped about my arm and rail at the fate which kept me useless in the temple.

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

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

In S'suchuan the Lolos hold a vast territory which is absolutely closed to the Chinese on pain of death and over which they exercise no control.

Several expeditions have been launched against the Lolos but all have ended in disaster.

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

The pure blood Lolos "are a very fine tall race, with comparatively fair complexions, and often with straight features, suggesting a mixture of Mongolian with some more straight-featured race. Their appearance marks them as closely connected by race with the eastern Tibetans, the latter being, if anything, rather the bigger men of the two." [Footnote: "Yun-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze," by Major H.R. Davies, 1909, p.

389.] They are great wanderers and over a very large part of Yun-nan form the bulk of the hill population, being the most numerous of all the non-Chinese tribes in the province.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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