LI-CHIANG AND "THE TEMPLE OF THE FLOWERS"
We left a part of our outfit with Mr. Evans at Ta-li Fu and with a
new caravan of twenty-five animals traveled northward for six days to
Li-chiang Fu. By taking a small road we hoped to find good collecting
in the pine forests three days from Ta-li, but instead there was a
total absence of animal life. The woods were beautiful, parklike
stretches which in a country like California would be full of game,
but here were silent and deserted. During the fourth and fifth days we
were still in the forests, but on the sixth we crossed a pass 10,000
feet high and descended abruptly into a long marshy plain where at the
far end were the gray outlines of Li-chiang dimly visible against the
mountains.
Wu and I galloped ahead to find a temple for our camp, leaving Heller
and my wife to follow. A few pages from her journal tell of their entry
into the city.
We rode along a winding stone causeway and halted on the outskirts
of the town to wait until the caravan arrived. Neither Roy nor Wu
was in sight but we expected that the _mafus_ would ask where they
had gone and follow, for of coarse we could not speak a word of
the language. Already there was quite a sensation as we came down
the street, for our sudden appearance seemed to have stupefied
the people with amazement. One old lady looked at me with an
indescribable expression and uttered what sounded exactly like a
long-drawn "Mon Dieu" of disagreeable surprise.
I tried smiling at them but they appeared too astonished to
appreciate our friendliness and in return merely stared with open
mouths and eyes. We halted and immediately the street was blocked
by crowds of men, women, and children who poured out of the
houses, shops, and cross-streets to gaze in rapt attention. When
the caravan arrived we moved on again expecting that the _mafus_
had learned where Roy had gone, but they seemed to be wandering
aimlessly through the narrow winding streets. Even though we did
not find a camping place we afforded the natives intense delight.
I felt as though I were the chief actor in a circus parade at home,
but the most remarkable attraction there could not have equaled
our unparalleled success in Li-chiang. On the second excursion
through the town we passed down a cross-street, and suddenly from a
courtyard at the right we heard feminine voices speaking English.
"It's a girl. No, it's a boy. No, no, can't you see her hair, it's
a girl!" Just then we caught sight of three ladies, unmistakably
foreigners although dressed in Chinese costume. They were Mrs.
A. Kok, wife of the resident Pentecostal Missionary, and two
assistants, who rushed into the street as soon as they had
determined my sex and literally "fell upon my neck." They had not
seen a white woman since their arrival there four years ago and it
seemed to them that I had suddenly dropped from the sky.
While we were talking Wu appeared to guide us to the camp. They had
chosen a beautiful temple with a flower-filled courtyard on the
summit of a hill overlooking the city. It was wonderfully clean and
when our beds, tables, and chairs were spread on the broad stone
porch it seemed like a real home.
[Illustration: One of the Pagodas at Ta-li Fu]
The next days were busy ones for us all, Roy and Heller setting
traps, and I working at my photography. We let it be known that we
would pay well for specimens, and there was an almost uninterrupted
procession of men and boys carrying long sticks, on which were
strung frogs, rats, toads, and snakes. They would simply beam with
triumph and enthusiasm. Our fame spread and more came, bringing the
most ridiculous tame things--pigeons, maltese cats, dogs, white
rabbits, caged birds, and I even believe we might have purchased a
girl baby or two, for mothers stood about with little brown kiddies
on their backs as though they really would like to offer them to us
but hardly dared.
The temple priest was a good looking, smooth-faced chap, and hidden
under his coat he brought dozens of skins. I believe that his
religious vows did not allow him to handle animals--openly--and so
he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most
mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his
sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a rich man
when we left!
The people are mostly tribesmen--Mosos, Lolos, Tibetans, and many
others. The girls wear their hair "bobbed off" in front and with
a long plait in back. They wash their hair once--on their wedding
day--and then it is wrapped up in turbans for the rest of their
lives. The Tibetan women dress their hair in dozens of tiny braids,
but I don't believe there is any authority that they ever wash it,
or themselves either.
Li-chiang was our first collecting camp and we never had a better one.
On the morning after our arrival Heller found mammals in half his
traps, and in the afternoon we each put out a line of forty traps which
brought us fifty mammals of eleven species. This was a wonderful relief
after the many days of travel through country devoid of animal life.
Our traps contained shrews of two species, meadow voles, Asiatic
white-footed mice, spiny mice, rats, squirrels, and tree shrews. The
small mammals were exceedingly abundant and easy to catch, but after
the first day we began to have difficulty with the natives who stole
our traps. We usually marked them with a bit of cotton, and the boys
would follow an entire line down a hedge, taking every one. Sometimes
they even brought specimens to us for sale which we knew had been
caught in our stolen traps!
The traps were set under logs and stumps and in the grass where we
found the "runways" or paths which mice, rats and voles often make.
These animals begin to move about just after dark, and we usually would
inspect our traps with a lantern about nine o'clock in the evening.
This not only gave the trap a double chance to be filled but we also
secured perfect specimens, for such species as mice and shrews are
cannibalistic, and almost every night, if the specimens were not taken
out early in the evening, several would be partly eaten.
Small mammals are often of much greater interest and importance
scientifically than large ones, for, especially among the Insectivores,
there are many primitive forms which are apparently of ancestral stock
and throw light on the evolutionary history of other living groups.
Li-chiang is a fur market of considerable importance for the Tibetans
bring down vast quantities of skins for sale and trade. Lambs, goats,
foxes, cats, civets, pandas, and flying squirrels hang in the shops and
there are dozens of fur dressers who do really excellent tanning.
This city is a most interesting place especially on market day, for its
inhabitants represent many different tribes with but comparatively few
Chinese. By far the greatest percentage of natives are the Mosos who
are semi-Tibetan in their life and customs. They were originally an
independent race who ruled a considerable part of northern Yün-nan,
and Li-chiang was their ancient capital. To the effeminate and "highly
civilized" Chinese they are "barbarians," but we found them to be
simple, honest and wholly delightful people. Many of those whom we met
later had never seen a white woman, and yet their inherent decency was
in the greatest contrast to that of the Chinese who consider themselves
so immeasurably their superior.
The Mosos have large herds of sheep and cattle, and this is the one
place in the Orient except in large cities along the coast, where we
could obtain fresh milk and butter. As with the Tibetans, buttered
tea and _tsamba_ (parched oatmeal) are the great essentials, but they
also grow quantities of delicious vegetables and fruit. Buttered tea
is prepared by churning fresh butter into hot tea until the two have
become well mixed. It is then thickened with finely ground _tsamba_
until a ball is formed which is eaten with the fingers. The combination
is distinctly good when the ingredients are fresh, but if the butter
happens to be rancid the less said of it the better.
The natives of this region are largely agriculturists and raise great
quantities of squash, turnips, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, onions,
corn, peas, beans, oranges, pears, persimmons and nuts. While traveling
we filled our saddle pockets with pears and English walnuts or
chestnuts and could replenish our stock at almost any village along the
road.
Everything was absurdly cheap. Eggs were usually about eight cents
(Mexican) a dozen, and we could always purchase a chicken for an empty
tin can, or two for a bottle. In fact, the latter was the greatest
desideratum and when offers of money failed to induce a native to pose
for the camera a bottle nearly always would decide matters in our favor.
In Li-chiang we learned that there was good shooting only twelve miles
north of the city on the Snow Mountain range, the highest peak of which
rises 18,000 feet above the sea. We left a part of our outfit at Mr.
Kok's house and engaged a caravan of seventeen mules to take us to the
hunting grounds. Mr. Kok assisted us in numberless ways while we were
in the vicinity of Li-chiang and in other parts of the country. He took
charge of all our mail, sending it to us by runners, loaned us money
when it was difficult to get cash from Ta-li Fu and helped us to engage
servants and caravans.
It had rained almost continually for five days and a dense gray curtain
of fog hung far down in the valley, but on the morning of October
11 we awoke to find ourselves in another world. We were in a vast
amphitheater of encircling mountains, white almost to their bases,
rising ridge on ridge, like the foamy billows of a mighty ocean. At the
north, silhouetted against the vivid blue of a cloudless sky, towered
the great Snow Mountain, its jagged peaks crowned with gold where the
morning sun had kissed their summits. We rode toward it across a level
rock-strewn plain and watched the fleecy clouds form, and float upward
to weave in and out or lose themselves in the vast snow craters beside
the glacier. It was an inspiration, that beautiful mountain, lying so
white and still in its cradle of dark green trees. Each hour it seemed
more wonderful, more dominating in its grandeur, and we were glad to be
of the chosen few to look upon its sacred beauty.
[Illustration: A Moso Herder]
[Illustration: A Moso Woman]
In the early afternoon we camped in a tiny temple which nestled into a
grove of spruce trees on the outskirts of a straggling village. To the
north the Snow Mountain rose almost above us, and on the east and south
a grassy rock-strewn plain rolled away in gentle undulations to a range
of hills which jutted into the valley like a great recumbent dragon.
A short time after our camp was established we had a visit from an
Austrian botanist, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti, who had been in the village
for two weeks. He had come to Yün-nan for the Vienna Museum before the
war, expecting to remain a year, but already had been there three.
Surrounded as he was by Tibet, Burma, and Tonking, his only possible
exit was by way of the four-month overland journey to Shanghai. He had
little money and for two years had been living on Chinese food. He
dined with us in the evening, and his enjoyment of our coffee, bread,
kippered herring, and other canned goods was almost pathetic.
A week after our arrival Baron Haendel-Mazzetti left for Yün-nan Fu and
eventually reached Shanghai which, however, became a closed port to him
upon China's entry into the European war. It is to be hoped that his
collections, which must be of great scientific value and importance,
have arrived at a place of safety long ere this book issues from the
press.