Yvette Borup Andrews

The earliest remains of primitive man probably will be found somewhere in the vast plateau of Central Asia, north of the Himalaya Mountains. From this region came the successive invasions that poured into Europe from the east, to India from the north, and to China from the west; the migration route to North America led over the Bering Strait and spread fanwise south and southeast to the farthest extremity of South America.

Gorals and serows belong to the subfamily Rupicaprinae which is an early mountain-living offshoot of the Bovidae; it also includes the chamois, takin, and the so-called Rocky Mountain goat of America. The animals are commonly referred to as "goat-antelopes" in order to express the intermediate position which they apparently hold between the goats and antelopes. They are also sometimes called the Rupicaprine antelopes from the scientific name of the chamois ( Rupicapra).

From Ma-li-pa we traveled almost due north to the Salween River. The country through which we passed was a succession of dry treeless hills, brown and barren and devoid of animal life. On the evening of the third day we reached the Salween at a ferry a few miles from the village of Changlung where the river begins its great bend to the eastward and sweeps across the border from China into Burma.

During the time the Expedition was preparing to leave New York, China was in turmoil. Yuan Shi-kai was president of the Republic, but the hope of his heart was to be emperor of China. For twenty years he had plotted for the throne; he had been emperor for one hundred miserable days; and now he was watching, impotently, his dream-castles crumble beneath his feet. Yuan was the strong man of his day, with more power, brains, and personality than any Chinese since Li-Hung Chang. He always had been a factor in his political world.

Y.B.A.

October had slipped into November when we left the temple and shifted camp to the other side of the Snow Mountain at the "White Water." It was a brilliant day and the ride up the valley could not have been more beautiful. Crossing the gangheisa or "dry sea," a great grassy plain which was evidently a dry lake basin, we followed the trail into the forest and down the side of a deep canon to a mountain stream where the waters spread themselves in a thin, green veil over a bed of white stones.

It is a long hard climb out of the Salween valley. We left on March 24 and all day crawled up the steep sides on a trail which doubled back and forth upon itself like an endless letter S. From our camp at night the river was just visible as a thin green line several thousand feet below, and for the first time in days, we needed a charcoal fire in our tents.

Y.B.A.

Three days after leaving Shanghai we arrived at Pagoda Anchorage at the mouth of the Min River, twelve miles from Foochow.

We boarded a launch which threaded its way through a fleet of picturesque fishing vessels, each one of which had a round black and white eye painted on its crescent-shaped bow. When asked the reason for this decoration a Chinese on the launch looked at us rather pityingly for a moment and then said: "No have eye. No can see." How simple and how entirely satisfactory!

In mid-November we left the White Water with a caravan of twenty-six mules and horses. Following the road from Li-chiang to the Yangtze, we crossed the "Black Water" and climbed steadily upward over several tremendous wooded ridges, each higher than the last, to the summit of the divide.

After a week on the pass above Ho-mu-shu we shifted camp to a village called Tai-ping-pu, ten miles nearer Teng-yueh on the same road. The ride along the summit of the mountain was a delight, for we passed through grove after grove of rhododendrons in full blossom. The trees were sometimes thirty feet in height and the red flowers glowed like clusters of living coals among their dark green leaves. In the northern part of Yuen-nan the rhododendrons grow above other timber line on mountains where it is too high even for spruces.

A few days after our arrival in Yen-ping we went with Mr. Caldwell and his son Oliver to a Taoist temple seven miles away in a lonely ravine known as Chi-yuen-kang. The walk to the temple in the early morning was delightful. The "bamboo chickens" and francolins were calling all about us and on the way we shot enough for our first day's dinner. Both these birds are abundant in Fukien Province but it is by no means easy to kill them for they live in such thick cover that they can only be flushed with difficulty.

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