THE "HORSE-DEER" OF SHANSI
All the morning our carts had humped and rattled over the stones in a
somber valley one hundred and fifty _li_[2] from where we had killed
the sheep. With every mile the precipitous cliffs pressed in more
closely upon us until at last the gorge was blocked by a sheer wall
of rock. Our destination was a village named Wu-tai-hai, but there
appeared to be no possible place for a village in that narrow cañon.
[Footnote 2: A _li_ equals about one-third of a mile.]
We were a quarter of a mile from the barrier before we could
distinguish a group of mud-walled huts, seemingly plastered against
the rock like a collection of swallows' nests. No one but a Chinese
would have dreamed of building a house in that desolate place. It
was Wu-tai-hai, without a doubt, and Harry and I rode forward to
investigate.
At the door of a tiny hut we were met by one of our Chinese
taxidermists. He ushered us into the court and, with a wave of his
hand, announced, "This is the American Legation." The yard was a mass
of straw and mud. From the gaping windows of the house bits of torn
paper fluttered in the wind; inside, at one end of the largest room,
was a bed platform made of mud; at the other, a fat mother hog with
five squirming "piglets" sprawled contentedly on the dirt floor. Six
years before Colonel (then Captain) Thomas Holcomb, of the United
States Marine Corps, had spent several days at this hut while hunting
elk. Therefore, it will be known to Peking Chinese until the end of
time as the "American Legation."
An inspection of the remaining houses in the village disclosed no
better quarters, so our boys ousted the sow and her family, swept the
house, spread the _kang_ and floor with clean straw, and pasted fresh
paper over the windows. We longed to use our tents, but there was
nothing except straw or grass to burn, and cooking would be impossible.
The villagers were too poor to buy coal from Kwei-hua-cheng, forty
miles away, and there was not a sign of wood on the bare, brown hills.
At the edge of the _kang_, in these north Shansi houses, there is
always a clay stove which supports a huge iron pot. A hand bellows is
built into the side of the stove, and by feeding straw or grass with
one hand and energetically manipulating the bellows with the other, a
fire sufficient for simple cooking is obtained.
Except for a few hours of the day the house is as cold as the yard
outside, but the natives mind it not at all. Men and women alike dress
in sheepskin coats and padded cotton trousers. They do not expect to
remove their clothing when they come indoors, and warmth, except at
night, is a nonessential in their scheme of life. A system of flues
draws the heat from the cooking fires underneath the _kang_, and the
clay bricks retain their temperature for several horn's.
At best the north China natives lead a cheerless existence in winter.
The house is not a home. Dark, cold, dirty, it is merely a place in
which to eat and sleep. There is no home-making instinct in the Chinese
wife, for a centuries' old social system, based on the Confucian
ethics, has smothered every thought of the privileges of womanhood. Her
place is to cook, sew, and bear children; to reflect only the thoughts
of her lord and master--to have none of her own.
Wu-tai-hai was typical of villages of its class in all north China;
mud huts, each with a tiny courtyard, built end to end in a corner of
the hillside. A few acres of ground in the valley bottom and on the
mountain side capable of cultivation yield enough wheat, corn, turnips,
cabbages, and potatoes to give the natives food. Their life is one of
work with few pleasures, and yet they are content because they know
nothing else.
Imagine, then, what it meant when we suddenly injected ourselves into
their midst. We had come from a world beyond the mountains--a world
of which they had sometimes heard, but which was as unreal to them as
that of another planet. Europe and America were merely names. A few had
learned from passing soldiers that these strange men in that dim, far
land had been fighting among themselves and that China, too, was in
some vague way connected with the struggle.
But it had not affected them in their tiny rock-bound village. Their
world was encompassed within the valley walls or, in its uttermost
limits, extended to Kwei-hua-cheng, forty miles away. They knew, even,
that a "fire carriage" running on two rails of steel came regularly to
Feng-chen, four days' travel to the east, but few of them had ever seen
it. So it was almost as unreal as stories of the war and aëroplanes and
automobiles.
All the village gathered at the "American Legation" while we
unpacked our carts. They gazed in silent awe at our guns and cameras
and sleeping bags, but the trays of specimens brought forth an
active response. Here was something that was a part of their own
life--something they could understand. Mice and rabbits like these they
had seen in their own fields; that weasel was the same kind of animal
which sometimes stole their chickens. They pointed to the rocks when
they saw a red-legged partridge, and told us there were many there;
also pheasants.
Why we wanted the skins they could not understand, of course. I told
them that we would take them far away across the ocean to America and
put them in a great house as large as that hill across the valley; but
they smilingly shook their heads. The ocean meant nothing to them, and
as for a house as large as a hill--well, there never could be such a
place. They were perfectly sure of that.
We had come to Wu-tai-hai to hunt wapiti--_ma-lu_ (horse-deer) the
natives call them--and they assured us that we could find them on the
mountains behind the village. Only last night, said one of the men, he
had seen four standing on the hillside. Two had antlers as long as that
stick, but they were no good now--the horns were hard--we should have
come in the spring when they were soft. Then each pair was worth $150,
at least, and big ones even more. The doctors make wonderful medicine
from the horns--only a little of it would cure any disease no matter
how bad it was. They themselves could not get the _ma-lu_, for the
soldiers had long since taken away all their guns, but they would show
us where they were.
It was pleasant to hear all this, for we wanted some of those wapiti
very badly, indeed. It is one of the links in the chain of evidence
connecting the animals of the Old World and the New--the problem which
makes Asia the most fascinating hunting ground of all the earth.
When the early settlers first penetrated the forests of America they
found the great deer which the Indians called "wapiti." It was supposed
for many years that it inhabited only America, but not long ago similar
deer were discovered in China, Manchuria, Korea, Mongolia, Siberia,
and Turkestan, where undoubtedly the American species originated. Its
white discoverers erroneously named the animal "elk," but as this title
properly belongs to the European "moose," sportsmen have adopted the
Indian name "wapiti" to avoid confusion. Of course, changed environment
developed different "species" in all the animals which migrated from
Asia either to Europe or America, but their relationships are very
close, indeed.
The particular wapiti which we hoped to get at Wu-tai-hai represented
a species almost extinct in China. Because of relentless persecution
when the antlers are growing and in the "velvet" and continual cutting
of the forests only a few individuals remain in this remote corner
of northern Shansi Province. These will soon all be killed, for
the railroad is being extended to within a few miles of their last
stronghold, and sportsmen will flock to the hills from the treaty ports
of China.
Our first hunt was on November first. We left camp by a short cut
behind the village and descended to the bowlder-strewn bed of the creek
which led into a tremendous gorge. We felt very small and helpless as
our eyes traveled up the well-nigh vertical walls to the ragged edge
of the chasm a thousand feet above us. The mightiness of it all was
vaguely depressing, and it was with a distinct feeling of relief that
we saw the cañon widen suddenly into a gigantic amphitheater. In its
very center, rising from a ragged granite pedestal, a pinnacle of rock,
crowned by a tiny temple, shot into the air. It was three hundred feet,
at least, from the stream bed to the summit of the spire--and what a
colossal task it must have been to transport the building materials for
the temple up the sheer sides of rock! The valley sinners must gain
much merit from the danger and effort involved in climbing there to
worship.
Farther on we passed two villages and then turned off to the right up
a tributary valley. We were anxiously looking for signs of forest, but
the only possible cover was in a few ravines where a sparse growth of
birch and poplar bushes, not more than six or eight feet high, grew on
the north slope. Moreover, we could see that the valley ended in open
rolling uplands.
PLATE XV
[Illustration: THE HEAD OF THE RECORD RAM]
[Illustration: MAP OF MONGOLIA AND CHINA SHOWING ROUTE OF SECOND
ASIATIC EXPEDITION IN BROKEN LINES]
Turning to Na-mon-gin, I said, "How much farther are the _ma-lu?_"
"Here," he answered. "We have already arrived. They are in the bushes
on the mountain side."
Caldwell and I were astounded. The idea of looking for wapiti in such
a place seemed too absurd! There was hardly enough cover successfully
to conceal a rabbit, to say nothing of an animal as large as a horse.
Nevertheless, the hunters assured us that the _ma-lu_ were there, and
we began to take a new interest in the birch scrub. Almost immediately
we saw three roebuck near the rim of one of the ravines, their white
rump-patches showing conspicuously as they bobbed about in the thin
cover. We could have killed them easily, but the hunters would not let
us shoot, for we were after larger game.
A few moments later we separated, Harry keeping on up the main valley,
while my hunter and I turned into a patch of brush directly above us.
We had not gone fifty yards when there was a crash, a rush of feet, and
four wapiti dashed through the bushes. The three cows kept straight on,
but the bull stopped just on the crest of the ridge directly behind
a thick screen of twigs. My rifle was sighted at the huge body dimly
visible through the branches. In a moment I would have touched the
trigger, but the hunter caught my arm, whispering frantically, "Don't
shoot! Don't shoot!"
Of course I knew it was a long chance, for the bullet almost certainly
would have been deflected by the twigs, but those splendid antlers
seemed very near and very, very desirable. I lowered my rifle
reluctantly, and the bull disappeared over the hill crest whence the
cows had gone.
"They'll stop in the next ravine," said the hunter, but when we
cautiously peered over the ridge the animals were not there--nor were
they in the next. At last we found their trail leading into the grassy
uplands; but the possibility of finding wapiti, these animals of the
forests, on those treeless slopes seemed too absurd even to consider.
Yet, the old Mongol kept straight on across the rolling meadow.
Suddenly, off at the right, Harry's rifle banged three times in quick
succession--then an interval, and two more shots. Ten seconds later
three wapiti cows showed black against the sky line. They were coming
fast and straight toward us. We flattened ourselves in the grass, lying
as motionless as two gray bowlders, and a moment later another wapiti
appeared behind the cows. As the sun glistened on his branching antlers
there was no doubt that he was a bull, and a big one, too.
The cows were headed to pass about two hundred yards above us and
behind the hill crest. I could easily have reached the summit where
they would have been at my mercy, but lower down the big bull also
was coming, and the hunter would not let me move. "Wait, wait," he
whispered, "we'll surely get him. Wait, we can't lose him."
"What about that ravine?" I answered. "He'll go into the cover. He will
never come across this open hillside. I'm going to shoot."
"No, no, he won't turn there. I am sure he won't." The Mongol was
right. The big fellow ran straight toward us until he came to the
entrance to the valley. My heart was in my mouth as he stopped for an
instant and looked down into the cover. Then, for some strange reason,
he turned and came on. Three hundred yards away he halted suddenly,
swung about, and looked at the ravine again as if half decided to go
back.
He was standing broadside, and at the crash of my rifle we could hear
the soft thud of the bullet striking flesh; but without a sign of
injury he ran forward and stopped under a swell of ground. I could
see just ten inches of his back and the magnificent head. It was a
small target at three hundred yards, and I missed him twice. With the
greatest care I held the little ivory bead well down on that thin brown
line, but the bullet only creased his back. It was no use--I simply
could not hit him. Running up the hill a few feet, I had his whole body
exposed, and the first shot put him down for good.
With a whoop of joy my old Mongol dashed down the steep slope. I had
never seen him excited while we were hunting sheep, but now he was wild
with delight. Before he had quieted we saw Harry coming over the hill
where the wapiti had first appeared. He told us that he had knocked
the bull down at long range and had expected to find him dead until he
heard me shooting. We found where his bullet had struck the wapiti in
the shoulder, yet the animal was running as though untouched.
I examined the bull with the greatest interest, for it was the first
Asiatic wapiti of this species that I had ever seen. Its splendid
antlers carried eleven points but they were not as massive in the beam
or as sharply bent backward at the tips as are those of the American
elk. Because of its richer coloration, however, it was decidedly
handsomer than any of the American animals.
But the really extraordinary thing was to find the wapiti there at
all. It seemed as incongruous as the first automobile that I saw upon
the Gobi Desert, for in every other part of the world the animal is a
resident of the parklike openings in the forests. Here not a twig or
bush was in sight, only the rolling, grass-covered uplands. Undoubtedly
these mountains had been wooded many years ago, and as the trees
were cut away, the animals had no alternative except to die or adapt
themselves to almost plains conditions. The sparse birch scrub in the
ravines still afforded them limited protection during the day, but they
could feed only at night. It was a case of rapid adaptation to changed
environment such as I have seen nowhere else in all the world.
The wapiti, of course, owed their continued existence to the fact that
the Chinese villagers of the valley had no firearms; otherwise, when
the growing antlers set a price upon their heads, they would all have
been exterminated within a year or two.