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. Heller 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. Heller 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 circumference 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
Heller 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 mussing 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 Yün-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 Yün-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, massacred 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."[2] They are great wanderers and over a very large part of Yün-nan
form the bulk of the hill population, being the most numerous of all
the non-Chinese tribes in the province.
[Footnote 2: "Yün-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze," by
Major H. R. Davies, 1909, p. 389.]
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 Yün-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 Yün-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 assert 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
Assam and the eastern border of Yün-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 Yün-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.
The hilly nature of the country and the consequent lack of good
means of communication have also naturally militated against the
formation of any large kingdoms with effective control over the
mountainous districts. Directly we get to a flat country with
good roads and navigable rivers, we find the tribal distinctions
disappear, and the whole of the inhabitants are welded into a
homogeneous people under a settled government, speaking one
language.
Burmese as heard throughout the Irrawaddy valley is the same
everywhere. A traveler from Rangoon to Bhamo will find one language
spoken throughout his journey, but an expedition of the same
length in the hilly country to the east or to the west of the
Irrawaddy valley would bring him into contact with twenty mutually
unintelligible tongues.
The same state of things applies to Siam and Tonking--one nation
speaking one language in the flat country and a Tower of Babel in
the hills (_loc. cit._, pp. 332-883).