CAMPING ON THE NAM-TING RIVER
Every morning the valley at Meng-ting was filled with a thick white
mist and when we broke camp at daylight each mule was swallowed up in
the fog as soon as it left the rice field. We followed the sound of
the leader's bell, but not until ten o'clock was the entire caravan
visible. For thirty U the valley is broad and flat as at Meng-ting and
filled with a luxuriant growth of rank grass, but it narrows suddenly
where the river has carved its way through a range of hills.
The trail led uncertainly along a steep bank through a dense, tropical
jungle. Palms and huge ferns, broad-leaved bananas, and giant trees
laced and interlaced with thorny vines and hanging creepers formed a
living wall of green as impenetrable as though it were a net of steel.
We followed the trail all day, sometimes picking our way among the
rocks high above the river or padding along in the soft earth almost
at the water's edge. At night we camped in a little clearing where
some adventurous native had fought the jungle and been defeated; his
bamboo hut was in ruins and the fields were overgrown with a tangle of
throttling vegetation.
We had seen no mammals, but the birds along the road were fascinating.
Brilliant green parrots screamed in the tree tops and tiny sun-birds
dressed in garments of red and gold and purple, flashed across the
trail like living jewels. Once we heard a strange whirr and saw a huge
hornbill flapping heavily over the river, every beat of his stiff wing
feathers sounding like the motor of an aëroplane. Bamboo partridges
called from the bushes and dozens of unfamiliar bird notes filled the
air.
At eleven o'clock on the following morning we passed two thatched
huts in a little clearing beside the trail and the guide remarked
that our camping place was not far away. We reached it shortly and
were delighted. Two enormous trees, like great umbrellas, spread a
cool, dark shade above a sparkling stream on the edge of an abandoned
rice field. From a patch of ground as level as a floor, where our
tents were pitched, we could look across the brown rice dykes to the
enclosing walls of jungle and up to the green mountain beyond. A
half mile farther down the trail, but hidden away in the jungle, lay
a picturesque Shan village of a dozen huts, where the guide said we
should be able to find hunters.
As soon as tiffin was over we went up the creek with a bag of steel
traps to set them on the tiny trails which wound through the jungle in
every direction. Selecting a well-beaten patch we buried the trap in
the center, covered it carefully with leaves, and suspended the body of
a bird or a chunk of meat by a wire over the pan about three feet from
the ground. A light branch was fastened to the chain as a "drag." When
the trap is pulled this invariably catches in the grass or vines and,
while holding the animal firmly, still gives enough "spring" to prevent
its freeing itself.
Trapping is exceedingly interesting for it is a contest of wits between
the trapper and the animal with the odds by no means in favor of the
former. The trap may not be covered in a natural way; the surroundings
may be unduly disturbed; a scent of human hands may linger about the
bait, or there may be numberless other possibilities to frighten the
suspicious animal.
In the evening our guide brought a strange individual whom he
introduced as the best hunter in the village. He was a tall Mohammedan
Chinese who dressed like a Shan and was married to a Shan woman. He
seemed to be afflicted with mental and physical inertia, for when he
spoke it was in slow drawl hardly louder than a whisper, and every
movement of his body was correspondingly deliberate. We immediately
named him the "Dying Rabbit" but discovered very shortly that he really
had boundless energy and was an excellent hunter.
The next morning he collected a dozen Shans for beaters and we drove a
patch of jungle above camp but without success. There were many sambur
tracks in the clearings, but we realized at once that it was going to
be difficult to get deer because of the dense cover; the open places
were so few and small that a sambur had every chance to break through
without giving a shot.
Nearly all the beaters carried guns. The "Dying Rabbit" was armed with
a .45-caliber bolt action rifle into which he had managed to fit a .808
shell and several of the men had Winchester carbines, model 1875. The
guns had all been brought from Burma and most were without ammunition,
but each man had an assortment of different cartridges and used
whichever he could force into his rifle.
[Illustration: Our Camp on the Nam-ting River]
[Illustration: The Shan Village at Nam-ka]
The men worked splendidly under the direction of the "Dying Rabbit."
On the second day they put up a sambur which ran within a hundred feet
of us but was absolutely invisible in the high grass. When we returned
to camp we found that a civet (_Viverra_) had walked past our tent and
begun to eat the scraps about the cook box, regardless of the shouts of
the _mafus_ and servants who were imploring Heller to bring his gun.
After considerable difficulty they persuaded him that there really was
some cause for their excitement and he shot the animal. It was probably
ill, for its flesh was dry and yellow, but the skin was in excellent
condition.
Civets belong to the family _Viverridæ_ and are found only in Asia and
Africa. Although they resemble cats superficially they are not directly
related to them and their claws are only partly retractile. They are
very beautiful animals with a grayish body spotted with black, a ringed
tail, and a black and white striped pointed head. A scent gland near
the base of the tail secretes a strong musk-like odor which, although
penetrating, is not particularly disagreeable. The animals move about
chiefly in the early morning and evening and at night and prey upon
birds, eggs, small mammals, fish, and frogs. One which we caught and
photographed had a curious habit of raising the hair on the middle of
its back from the neck to the tail whenever it was angry or frightened.
Although there were no houses within half a mile of camp we were
surprised on our first night to hear cocks crowing in the jungle. The
note was like that of the ordinary barnyard bird, except that it ended
somewhat more abruptly. The next morning we discovered Chanticleer and
all his harem in a deserted rice field, and he flew toward the jungle
in a flash of red and gold.
I dropped him and one of his hens with a right and left of "sixes" and
found that they were jungle fowl (_Gallus gallus_) in full plumage. The
cock was a splendid bird. The long neck feathers (hackles) spread over
his back and wings like a shimmering golden mantle, but it was hardly
more beautiful than the black of his underparts and green-glossed
tail. Picture to yourself a "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have
him in all his glory except that his tail is drooping and he is more
pheasant-like in his general bearing. The female was a trim little
bird with a lilac sheen to her brown feathers and looked much like a
well-kept game bantam hen.
The jungle fowl is the direct ancestor of our barnyard hens and
roosters which were probably first domesticated in Burma and adjacent
countries long before the dawn of authentic history. According to
tradition the Chinese received their poultry from the West about 1400
B.C. and they are figured in Babylonian cylinders between the sixth
and seventh centuries B.C.; although they were probably introduced in
Greece through Persia there is no direct evidence as to when and how
they reached Europe.
The black-breasted jungle fowl (_Gallus gallus_) inhabit northern
India, Burma, Indo-Chinese countries, the Malay Peninsula, and the
Philippine Islands; a related species, _G. lafayetti_, is found in
Ceylon; another, _G. sonnerati_, in southern India, and a fourth, _G.
varius_, in Java.
We found the jungle fowl wild and hard to kill even where they were
seldom hunted. During the heat of the day they remain in thick cover,
but in cloudy weather and in the early morning and evening they come
out into clearings to feed. At our camp on the Nam-ting River we could
usually put up a few birds on the edge of the deserted rice fields
which stretched up into the jungle, but they were never far away from
the edge of the forest.
We sometimes saw single birds of either sex, but usually a cock had
with him six or eight hens. It was interesting to watch such a flock
feeding in the open. The male, resplendent in his vivid dress, shone
like a piece of gold against the dull brown of the dry grass and
industriously ran about among his trim little hens, rounding up the
stragglers and directing his harem with a few low-toned "clucks"
whenever he found some unusually tempting food.
It was his duty, too, to watch for danger and he usually would send
the flock whirring into the jungle while they were well beyond shotgun
range. When flushed from the open the birds nearly always would alight
in the first large tree and sit for a few moments before flying deeper
into the jungle. We caught several hens in our steel traps, and one
morning at the edge of a swamp I shot a jungle fowl and a woodcock with
a "right and left" as they flushed together.
We were at the Nam-ting camp at the beginning of the mating season
for the jungle fowl. It is said that they brood from January to April
according to locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs
under a bamboo clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have
been scratched together for a nest. The hen announces the laying of
an egg by means of a proud cackle, and the chicks themselves have the
characteristic "peep, peep, peep" of the domestic birds. After the
breeding season the beautiful red and gold neck hackles of the male
sometimes are molted and replaced by short blackish feathers.
There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the cocks are
polygamous, but our observations tend to show that they are. We never
saw more than one male in a flock and in only one or two instances
were the birds in pairs. The cocks are inveterate fighters like the
domestic birds and their long curved spurs are exceedingly effective
weapons.
We set a trap for a leopard on a hill behind the Nam-ting River camp
and on the second afternoon it contained a splendid polecat. This
animal is a member of the family Mustelidæ which includes mink, otter,
weasels, skunks, and ferrets, and with its brown body, deep yellow
throat, and long tail is really very handsome. Polecats inhabit the
Northern Hemisphere and are closely allied to the ferret which so often
is domesticated and used in hunting rats and rabbits. We found them
to be abundant in the low valleys along the Burma border and often
saw them during the day running across a jungle path or on the lower
branches of a tree. The polecat is a blood-thirsty little beast and
kills everything that comes in its way for the pure love of killing,
even when its appetite has been satisfied.
On the third morning we found two civets in the traps. The cook told
me that some animal had stolen a chicken from one of his boxes during
the night and we set a trap only a few yards from our tent on a trail
leading into the grass. The civet was evidently the thief for the cook
boxes were not bothered again.
Inspecting the traps every morning and evening was a delightful part of
our camp life. It was like opening a Christmas package as we walked up
the trails, for each one held interesting possibilities and the mammals
of the region were so varied that surprises were always in store for
us. Besides civets and polecats, we caught mongooses, palm civets, and
other carnivores. The small traps yielded a new _Hylomys_, several new
rats, and an interesting shrew.
We saw a few huge squirrels (_Ratufa gigantea_) and shot one. It was
thirty-six inches long, coal black above and yellow below. The animals
were very shy and as they climbed about in the highest trees they were
by no means easy to see or shoot. They represent an interesting group
confined to India, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, the islands of the Dutch
East Indies, and Borneo.