Camps and Trails in China Part 25

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, h.e.l.ler 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.

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--Tali-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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

LAST DAYS IN CHINA

It was of paramount importance to pack our specimens before the beginning of the summer rains. They might be expected to break in full violence any day after June 1, and when they really began it would be impossible to get our boxes to Bhamo, for virtually all caravan travel ceases during the wet season. Therefore our second stay at Hui-yao was short and we returned to Teng-yueh on May 24, ending the active field work of the Expedition exactly a year from the time it began with our trip up the Min River to Yeng-ping in f.u.kien Province.

Mr. Grierson had kindly invited us again to become his guests and no place ever seemed more delightful, after our hot and dusty ride, than his beautiful garden and cool, shady verandah where a dainty tea was served.

Our days in Teng-yueh were busy ones, for after the specimens were packed and the boxes sealed it was necessary to wrap them in waterproof covers; moreover, the equipment had to be sorted and sold or discarded, a caravan engaged, and nearly a thousand feet of motion-picture film developed. This was done in the s.p.a.cious dark room connected with Mr. Grierson's house which offered a welcome change from the cramped quarters of the tent which we had used for so many months.

Much of the success of our motion film lay in the fact that it was developed within a short time after exposure, for had we attempted to bring or send it to Shanghai, the nearest city with facilities for doing such work, it would inevitably have been ruined by the climatic changes.

Although cinematograph photography requires an elaborate and expensive outfit and is a source of endless work, nevertheless, the value of an actual moving record of the life of such remote regions is worth all the trouble it entails.

The Paget natural color plates proved to be eminently satisfactory and were among the most interesting results of the expedition. The stereoscopic effects and the faithful reproduction of the delicate atmospheric shading in the photographs are remarkable. Although the plates had been subjected to a variety of climatic conditions and temperatures by the time the last ones were exposed in Burma, a year and a half after their manufacture, they showed no signs of deterioration even when the ordinary negatives which we brought with us from America had been ruined. The other photographs, some of which are reproduced in this book, speak for themselves.

The entire collections of the Expedition were packed in forty-one cases and included the following specimens: 2,100 mammals 800 birds 200 reptiles and batrachians 200 skeletons and formalin preparations for anatomical study 150 Paget natural color plates 500 photographic negatives 10,000 feet of motion-picture film.

Since the Expedition was organized primarily for the study of the mammalian fauna and its distribution, our efforts were directed very largely toward this branch of science, and other specimens were gathered only when conditions were especially favorable. I believe that the mammal collection is the most extensive ever taken from China by a single continuous expedition, and a large percentage undoubtedly will prove to represent species new to science. Our tents were pitched in 108 different spots from 15,000 feet to 1,400 feet above sea level, and because of this range in alt.i.tudes, the fauna represented by our specimens is remarkably varied.

Moreover, during our nine months in Yun-nan we spent 115 days in the saddle, riding 2,000 miles on horse or mule back, largely over small roads or trails in little known parts of the province.

In Teng-yueh we were entertained most hospitably and the leisure hours were made delightful by golf, tennis, riding, and dinners. Mr. Grierson was a charming host who placed himself, as well as his house and servants, at our disposal, utter strangers though we were, and we shall never forget his welcome.

We decided to take four man-chairs to Bhamo because of the rain which was expected every day, and the coolies made us very comfortable upon our sleeping bags which were swung between two bamboo poles and covered with a strip of yellow oil-cloth. They were the regulation Chinese "mountain schooner," at which we had so often laughed, but they proved to be infinitely more desirable than riding in the rain.

With the forty-one cases of specimens we left Teng-yueh on June 1, behind a caravan of thirty mules for the eight-day journey to Bhamo on the outskirts of civilization. Our chair-coolies were miserable specimens of humanity.

They were from S'suchuan Province and were all unmarried which alone is almost a crime in China. Every cent of money, earned by the hardest sort of work, they spent in drinking, gambling, and smoking opium. As Wu tersely put it "they make how much--spend how much!"

About every two hours they would deposit us unceremoniously in the midst of a filthy village and disappear into some dark den in spite of our remonstrances. We would grumble and fume and finally, getting out of our chairs, peer into the hole. In the half light we would see them huddled on a "kang" over tiny yellow flames sucking at their pipes. At tiffin each one would stretch out under a tree with a stone for a pillow and his broad straw hat propped up to screen him from the wind. With infinite care he would extract a few black grains from a dirty box, mix them with a little water, and cook them over an alcohol lamp until the opium bubbled and was almost ready to drop. Then placing it lovingly in the bowl of his pipe he would hold it against the flame and draw in long breaths of the sickly-sweet smoke. The men could work all day without food, but opium was a prime necessity.

It was almost impossible to start them in the morning and it became my regular duty to make the rounds of the filthy holes in which they slept, seize them by the collars and drag them into the street. Force made the only appeal to their deadened senses and we were heartily sick of them before we reached Bhamo.

The road to Bhamo is a gradual descent from five thousand feet to almost sea level. Because of the fever the valleys are largely inhabited by "Chinese Shans" who differ in dress and customs from the Southern Shans of the Nam-ting River. Few of the men were tattooed and the women all wore the enormous cylindrical turban which we had seen once before in the Salween Valley.

At noon of the fifth day we crossed the Yun-nan border into Burma. It is a beautiful spot where a foaming mountain torrent rushes out of the jungle in a series of picturesque cascades and loses itself in a living wall of green. The stream is spanned by a splendid iron bridge from which a fine wide road of crushed stone leads all the way to Bhamo.

What a difference between the country we were leaving and the one we were about to enter! It is the "deadly parallel" of the old East and the new West. On the one side is China with her flooded roads and bridges of rotting timber, the outward and visible signs of a nation still living in the Middle Ages, fighting progress, shackled by the iron doctrines of Confucius to the long dead past. Across the river is English Burma, with eyes turned forward, ever watchful of the welfare of her people, her iron bridges and macadam roads representing the very essence of modern thought and progress.

With paternal care of her officials the British government has provided _dak_ (mail) bungalows at the end of each day's journey which are open to every foreign traveler. They are comfortable little houses set on piles.

Each one has a s.p.a.cious living room, with a large teakwood table and inviting lounge chairs. In a corner stands a cabinet of cutlery, china, and gla.s.s, all clean and in perfect order. The two bedrooms are provided with adjoining baths and a covered pa.s.sageway connects the kitchen with the house. All is ready for the tired traveler, and a boy can be hired for a trifling sum to make the punkah "punk." Such comforts can only be appreciated when one has journeyed for months in a country where they do not exist.

Our last night on the road was spent at a _dak_ bungalow near a village only a few miles from Bhamo. We were seated at the window, when, with a rattle of wheels, the first cart we had seen in nine months pa.s.sed by. That cart brought to us more forcibly than any other thing a realization that the Expedition was ended and that we were standing on the threshold of civilization.

As Yvette turned from the window her eyes were wet with unshed tears, and a lump had risen in my throat. Not all the pleasures of the city, the love of friends or relatives, could make us wish to end the wild, free life of the year gone by. Silently we left the house and walked across the sunlit road into a grove of graceful, drooping palms; a white paG.o.da gleamed between the trees, and the pungent odor of wood smoke filled the air.

The spot was redolent with the atmosphere of the lazy East; the East which, like the fabled "Lorelei," weaves a mystic spell about the wanderer whom she has loved and taken to her heart, while yet he feels it not. And when he would cast her off and return to his own again she knows full well that her subtle charm will bring him back once more.

The next morning we entered Bhamo. It is a city of low, cool houses, wide lawns and tree-decked streets built on the bank of the muddy Irawadi River.

Only a few miles away the railroad reaches Katha, and palatial steamers run to Mandalay and Rangoon. We called upon Mr. Farmer, the Deputy Commissioner, who offered the hospitality of the "Circuit House" and in the evening took us with him to the Club.

A military band was playing and men in white, well-dressed women, and officers in uniform strolled about or sipped iced drinks beside the tennis court. We felt strange and shy but doubtless we seemed more strange to them for we were newly come from a far country which they saw only as a mystic, unknown land.

On June 9, at noon, we embarked for the 1,200-mile journey to Rangoon, exactly nine months after we had ridden away from Yun-nan Fu toward the Mountain of Eternal Snow. Our further travels need not be related here.

When we reached civilization we expected that our transport difficulties were ended; instead they had only begun. India was well-nigh isolated from the Pacific and to expose our valuable collection to the attacks of German pirates in the Mediterranean and Atlantic was not to be considered even though it necessitated traveling two thirds around the world to reach America safely.

We left Rangoon for Calcutta, crossed India with all our baggage to Bombay, and after a seemingly endless wait eventually succeeded in arriving at Hongkong by way of Singapore. There we separated from our faithful Wu and sent him to his home in Foochow. It was hard to say "good-by" to Wu, for his efficient service, his enthusiastic interest in the work of the Expedition, and, above all, his willingness to do whatever needed to be done, had won our grat.i.tude and affection. We ourselves went northward to j.a.pan, across the Pacific to Vancouver, and overland to New York, arriving on October 1, 1917, nearly nineteen months from the time we left. We were never separated from our collections for, had we left them, I doubt if they would ever have reached America. It was difficult enough to gather them in the field, but infinitely more so to guide the forty-one cases through the tangled s.h.i.+pping net of a war-mad world.

They reached New York without the loss of a single specimen and are now being prepared in the American Museum of Natural History for the study which will place the scientific results of the Asiatic Zoological Expedition before the public.

The story of our travels is at an end. Once more we are indefinable units in a vast work-a-day world, bound by the iron chains of convention to the customs of civilized men and things. The glorious days in our beloved East are gone, and yet, to us, the Orient seems not far away, for the miles of land and water can be traversed in a thought. Again we stand before our tent with the fragrant breath of the pines about us, watching the glistening peaks of the Snow Mountain turn purple and gold in the setting sun; again, we feel the mystic spell of the jungle, or hear the low, sweet tones of a gibbon's call. We have only to shut our eyes to bring back a picture of the bleak barriers of the Forbidden Land or the sunlit streets of a Burma village. Thank G.o.d, we saw it all together and such blessed memories can never die.