Camps and Trails in China Part 24

Therefore, when we left Teng-yueh our first camp was at Hui-yao.

h.e.l.ler and I started with four natives shortly after daylight. We crossed a tumbledown wooden bridge over the river at a narrow canon where the sides were straight walls of rock, and followed down the gorge for about two miles. On the way h.e.l.ler, who was in front, saw two muntjac standing in the gra.s.s 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 h.e.l.ler reached the clearing but he saw the second deer, a fine doe, standing on a rock.

Although his bullet pa.s.sed 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. h.e.l.ler, 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 h.e.l.ler 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 gra.s.s. I had reached an impa.s.sable precipice and was returning across a steep slope when seven gorals jumped out of the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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. h.e.l.ler, 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.sy 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 gla.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 mountain-side 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 gra.s.sy ridge where the goral had been standing. Again we crawled like snakes among the rocks and again an empty slope of waving gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 n.o.ble 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 sh.e.l.l 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 x.x.xVII

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 gra.s.s. 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.

h.e.l.ler 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. h.e.l.ler 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, h.e.l.ler 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 canon.

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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 th.o.r.n.y, 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s. 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 a.s.sured 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.

h.e.l.ler 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 h.e.l.ler 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 h.e.l.ler 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.

h.e.l.ler 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.

h.e.l.ler 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 h.e.l.ler called out that they had found the deer, which was lying stone dead half way down the side of the gorge in a ma.s.s 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.