Part 10 (1/2)
On our first day in the temple h.e.l.ler went up the Snow Mountain for a reconnoissance and the party secured a fine porcupine. It is quite a different animal from the American tree porcupines and represents a genus (_Hystrix_) which is found in Asia, Africa, and southern Europe. This species lives in burrows and, when hunting big game, we were often greatly annoyed to find that our dogs had followed the trail of one of these animals. We would arrive to see the hounds dancing about the burrow yelping excitedly instead of having a goral at bay as we had expected.
Some of the beautiful black and ivory white quills are more than twelve inches long and very sharp. A porcupine will keep an entire pack of dogs at bay and is almost sure to drive its murderous weapons into the bodies of some of them unless the hunters arrive in a short time. The Mosos eat the flesh which is white and fine.
Although we were only twelve miles from Li-chiang the traps yielded four shrews and one mouse which were new to our collection. The natives brought in three bats which we had not previously seen and began a thriving business in toads and frogs with now and then a snake.
The temple was an excellent place for small mammals but it was evident that we would have to move high up on the slopes of the mountain if gorals and other big game were to be obtained. Accordingly, while h.e.l.ler prepared a number of bat skins we started out on horseback to hunt a camp site.
It was a glorious day with the sun s.h.i.+ning brilliantly from a cloudless sky and just a touch of autumn snap in the air. We crossed the sloping rock-strewn plain to the base of the mountain, and discovered a trail which led up a forested shoulder to the right of the main peaks. An hour of steady climbing brought us to the summit of the ridge where we struck into the woods toward a snow-field on the opposite slope. The trail led us along the brink of a steep escarpment from which we could look over the valley and away into the blue distance toward Li-chiang. Three thousand feet below us the roof of our temple gleamed from among the sheltering pine trees, and the herds of sheep and cattle ma.s.sed themselves into moving patches on the smooth brown plain.
We pushed our way through the spruce forest with the glistening snow bed as a beacon and suddenly emerged into a flat open meadow overshadowed by the ragged peaks. ”What a perfectly wonderful place to camp,” we both exclaimed. ”If we can only find water, let's come tomorrow.”
The hunters had a.s.sured us that there were no streams on this end of the mountain but we hoped to find a snow bank which would supply our camp for a few days at least. We rode slowly up the meadow reveling in the grandeur of the snow-crowned pinnacles and feeling very small and helpless amid surroundings where nature had so magnificently expressed herself.
At the far end of the meadow we discovered a dry creek bed which led upward through the dense spruce forest. ”Where water has been, water may be again,” we argued and, leading the horses, picked our way among the trees and over fallen logs to a fairly open hill slope where we attempted to ride, but our animals were nearly done. After climbing a few feet they stood with heaving sides and trembling legs, the breath rasping through distended nostrils. We felt the alt.i.tude almost as badly as the horses for the meadow itself was twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea and the air was very thin.
There seemed to be no hope of finding even a suitable snow bank when it was slowly borne in upon us that the subdued roaring in our ears was the sound of water and not the effect of alt.i.tude as we both imagined. Above and to the left was a sheer cliff, hundreds of feet in height, and as we toiled upward and emerged beyond timber line we caught a glimpse of a silver ribbon streaming down its face. It came from a melting snow crater and we could follow its course with our eyes to where it swung downward along a rock wall not far from the upper end of the meadow. It was so hidden by the trees that had we not climbed above timber line, it never would have been discovered.
This solved the question of our camp and we looked about us happily. On the way through the forest we had noticed small mammal runways under almost every log and, when we stood above the tree limit, the gra.s.sy slope was cut by an intricate network of tiny tunnels. These were plainly the work of a meadow vole (_Microtus_) and at this alt.i.tude it certainly would prove to be a species new to our collection.
The sun had already dropped behind the mountain and the meadow was in shadow when we reached it again on our homeward way. By five o'clock we were in the temple eating a belated tiffin and making preparations for an early start. But our hopes were idle, for in the morning three of the mules had strayed, and we did not arrive at the meadow until two o'clock in the afternoon.
Our camp was made just at the edge of the spruce forest a few hundred yards from the snow stream. As soon as the tents were up we climbed to the gra.s.sy slope above timber line, with h.e.l.ler, to set a string of traps in the vole runways and under logs and stumps in the forest.
The hunters made their camp beside a huge rock a short distance away and slept in their ragged clothes without a blanket or shelter of any kind. It was delightfully warm, even at this alt.i.tude, when the sun was out, but as soon as it disappeared we needed a fire and the nights were freezing cold; yet the natives did not seem to mind it in the slightest and refused our offer of a canvas tent fly.
We never will forget that first night on the Snow Mountain. As we sat at dinner about the campfire we could see the somber ma.s.s of the forest losing itself in the darkness, and felt the unseen presence of the mighty peaks standing guard about our mountain home. We slept, breathing the strong, sweet perfume of the spruce trees and dreamed that we two were wandering alone through the forest opening the treasure boxes of the Wild.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FIRST GORAL
We were awakened before daylight by Wu's long drawn call to the hunters, ”_L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o_.” The steady drum of rain on our tent shot a thrill of disappointment through me as I opened my eyes, but before we had crawled out of our sleeping-bags and dressed it lessened to a gentle patter and soon ceased altogether. It left a cold, gray morning with dense clouds weaving in and out among the peaks but, nevertheless, I decided to go out with the hunters to try for goral.
Two of the men took the dogs around the base of a high rock shoulder spa.r.s.ely covered with scrub spruce while I went up the opposite slope accompanied by the other two. We had not been away from camp half an hour when the dogs began to yelp and almost immediately we heard them coming around the summit of the ridge in our direction. The hunters made frantic signs for me to hurry up the steep slope but in the thin air with my heart pounding like a trip hammer I could not go faster than a walk.
We climbed about three hundred yards when suddenly the dogs appeared on the side of the cliff near the summit. Just in front of them was a bounding gray form. The mist closed in and we lost both dogs and animals but ten minutes later a blessed gust of wind drifted the fog away and the goral was indistinctly visible with its back to a rock ledge facing the dogs. The big red leader of the pack now and then dashed in for a nip at the animal's throat but was kept at bay by its vicious lunges and sharp horns.
It was nearly three hundred yards away but the cloud was drifting in again and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope, frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and the first two shots spattered the loose rock about a foot low. For the third I got a dead rest over a stone and as the crash of the little Mannlicher echoed up the gorge, the goral threw itself into the air whirling over and over onto the rocks below.
The hunters, mad with excitement, dashed up the hill and down into the stream bed, and when I arrived the goral lay on a gra.s.sy ledge beside the water. The animal was stone dead, for my bullet had pa.s.sed through its lungs, and, although the front teeth had been smashed on the rocks, its horns were uninjured and the beautiful gray coat was in perfect condition.
It so happened that this ram was the largest which we killed on the entire trip.
When the hunters were carrying the goral to camp we met Yvette and h.e.l.ler on their way to visit the traps just below snow line, and she returned with me to photograph the animal and to watch the ceremonies which I knew would be performed. One of the natives cut a leafy branch, placed the goral upon it and at the first cut chanted a prayer. Then laying several leaves one upon the other he sliced off the tip of the heart, wrapped it carefully in the leaves and placed it in a nearby tree as an offering to the G.o.d of the Hunt.
I have often seen the Chinese and Korean hunters perform similar ceremonies at the death of an animal, and the idea that it is necessary to propitiate the G.o.d of the Hunt is universal. When I was shooting in Korea in 1912, and also in other parts of China, if luck had been against us for a few days the hunters would invariably ask me to buy a chicken, or some animal to sacrifice for ”good joss.”