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 grass. 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.
Heller 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 subspecies 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. Heller 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. Heller 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
cañon.
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 mass 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 shore. 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 thorny, 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 grass 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
grass. 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 assured 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.
Heller 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 Heller 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 Heller remained
on the hillside to watch the open fields, I followed the hounds along
the creek bed. Suddenly the whiplike crack of his Savage 260-800 rifle
sounded five times in quick succession just above our heads, and we
climbed hurriedly out of the gorge.
Heller 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.
Heller 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
Heller called out that they had found the deer, which was lying stone
dead half way down the side of the gorge in a mass 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.
It was a splendid male, carrying a magnificent pair of antlers which
measured twenty-seven inches in length. The deer was about the size
of an American wapiti, or elk, and must have weighed at least seven
hundred pounds, for it required eight men to lift it. The Chinese
hunters were wild with excitement, but especially so when we began
to eviscerate the animal, for they wished to save the blood which is
considered of great medicinal value. They filled caps, sacks, bamboo
joints, and every receptacle which they could find after each man had
drunk all he could possibly force down his throat and had eaten the
huge clots which choked the thorax.
When the sambur was brought to camp a regular orgy was held by our
servants, _mafus_, and dozens of villagers who gathered to buy, beg,
or steal some of the blood. Our interpreter, Wu, took the heart as his
perquisite, carefully extracted the blood, and dried it in a basin. The
liver also seemed to be an especial desideratum, and in fact every part
of the viscera was saved Because the antlers were hard they were not
considered of especial value, but had they been in the velvet we should
have had to guard them closely; then they would have been worth about
one hundred dollars (Mexican).
We expected from our easy hunt of the morning that it would not be
difficult to get sambur, and indeed, Heller did see another in the
afternoon but failed to kill it. Unfortunately, a relative of one of
the hunters died suddenly during the night and all the men went off
with their dogs to the burial feast which lasted several days, and we
were not able to find any other good hounds.
[Illustration: A Mountain Chair]
[Illustration: The Waterfall at Teng-yueh]
There were undoubtedly several sambur in the vicinity of our camp but
they fed entirely during the night and spent the day in such thick
cover that it was impossible to drive them out except with good beaters
or dogs. We hunted faithfully every morning and afternoon but did not
get another shot and, after a week, moved camp to the base of a great
mountain range six miles away near a Liso village.
The scenery in this region is magnificent. The mountain range is the
same on which we hunted at Ho-mu-shu and reaches a height of 11,000
feet near Wa-tien. It is wild and uninhabited, and the splendid forests
must shelter a good deal of game.
The foothills on which we were camped are low wooded ridges rising out
of open cultivated valleys, which often run into the jungle-filled
ravines in which the sambur sleep. Why the deer should occur in this
particular region and not in the neighboring country is a mystery
unless it is the proximity of the great forested mountain range. But in
similar places only a few miles away, where there is an abundance of
cover, the natives said the animals had never been seen, and neither
were they known on the opposite side of the mountain range where the
Teng-yueh-Ta-li Fu road crosses the Salween valley.
On May 20, we started back to Hui-yao to spend three or four days
hunting monkeys before we returned to Teng-yueh to pack our specimens
and end the field work of the Expedition. On the way my wife and I
became separated from the caravan but as we had one of our servants for
a guide we were not uneasy.
The man was a lazy, stupid fellow named Le Ping-sang (which we had
changed to "Leaping Frog" because he never did leap for any cause
whatever), and before long he had us hopelessly lost.
It would appear easy enough to ask the way from the natives, but the
Chinese are so suspicious that they often will intentionally misdirect
a stranger. They do not know what business the inquirer may have in
the village to which he wishes to go and therefore, just on general
principles, they send him off in the wrong direction.
Apparently this is what happened to us, for a farmer of whom we
inquired the way directed us to a road at nearly right angles to the
one we should have taken, and it was late in the afternoon before we
finally found the caravan.