CHAPTER XXXVII. 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 sub-species 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 canon.

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 250-300 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.

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.