Roy Chapman Andrews

“ With lanterns and a gun we pick our way among the trees until we strike the trail along which the traps are set. On the soft ground our feet are noiseless and, extinguishing the lanterns, we sit on a log to listen to the night sounds. The woods are full of life. Almost beside us there is a patter of tiny feet and a scurry among the dry leaves; a muntjac barks hoarsely on the opposite hillside, and a fox yelps behind us in the forest. Suddenly there is a sharp snap, a muffled squeal, and a trap a few yards away has done its work. Even in the tree tops the night life is active. ”

“ A few pages from my wife's "Journal" of September fifteenth describes our camp at Lu-ho-we and our life on the road to Ta-li Fu.
We are sitting on the porch of an old, old temple. It is on a hilltop in a forest grove with the gray-walled town lying at our feet. The sun is flooding the flower-filled courtyard and throwing bars of golden light through the twisted branches of a bent old pine, over the stone well, and into the dim recesses behind the altar where a benevolent idol grins down upon us. ”

“ Near the base of the mountains a Shan village nestled into the grass. The bamboo houses, sheltered by trees and bushes, were roofed in the shape of an overturned boat with thatch and the single street was wide and clean. Could this really be China? Verily, it was a different China from that we had seen before! It might be Burma, India, Java, but never China!
Before the door of a tiny house sat a woman spinning. A real Priscilla, somewhat strange in dress to be sure and with a mouth streaked with betel nut, but Priscilla just the same. And in his proper place beside her stood John Alden. ”

“ One of the other hunters was standing there and his crossbow twanged as the goral passed only a few yards from him, but the wicked little poisoned dart stuck quivering into a tree a few inches above the animal's back.
The goral dashed over the ridge almost on top of the second hunter who was too surprised to shoot and only yelled that it was coming toward us on the cliff below. Hotenfa leaped from rock to rock, almost like a goat himself, and dashed through the bushes toward a jutting shelf which overhung the gorge. ”

“ It has been aptly said that there are no real homes in China and it is not surprising that, ignored and despised for centuries, the Chinese woman shows no ability to improve the squalor of her surroundings. She passes her life in a dark, smoke-filled dwelling with broken furniture and a mud floor, together with pigs, chickens and babies enjoying a limited sphere of action under the tables and chairs, or in the tumble-down courtyard without. Her work is actually never done and a Chinese bride, bright and attractive at twenty, will be old and faded at thirty. ”

“ The birds almost invariably followed the river when flying and fed in the rice, barley, and corn fields not far from the water. It was an inspiring sight to see a flock of the huge birds run for a few steps along the ground and then launch themselves into the air, their black and white wings flashing in the sunlight. They formed into orderly ranks like a company of soldiers or strung out in a long thin line across the sky. ”

“ Sometimes they stand in the midst of a populous town and we ride through long streets between dirty houses, swarming with ragged women, filthy men, and screaming children; suddenly we come to the dilapidated entrance of our temple, pass through a courtyard, close the huge gates and are in another world.
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We leave early every morning and the boys are up long before dawn. As we sleepily open our eyes we see their dark figures silhouetted against the brilliant camp fire, hear the yawns of the mafus and the contented crunching of the mules as they chew their beans. ”

“ From a patch of ground as level as a floor, where our tents were pitched, we could look across the brown rice dykes to the enclosing walls of jungle and up to the green mountain beyond. A half mile farther down the trail, but hidden away in the jungle, lay a picturesque Shan village of a dozen huts, where the guide said we should be able to find hunters.
As soon as tiffin was over we went up the creek with a bag of steel traps to set them on the tiny trails which wound through the jungle in every direction. ”

“ Hanoi is a city of delightful surprises. It has broad, clean streets, overhung with trees which often form a cool green canopy overhead, beautiful lawns and well-kept houses, and in the center of the town is a lovely lake surrounded by a wide border of palms. At the far end, like a jewel in a crystal setting, seems to float a white pagoda, an outpost of the temple which stands in the midst of a watery meadow of lotus plants. The city shops are excellent, but in most instances the prices are exceedingly high. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the south the white summits of the Snow Mountain range towered majestically above the surrounding peaks and, in the gray light, the colors were beautiful beyond description. To the north we could see heavily wooded mountain slopes interspersed with open parklike meadows—splendid wapiti country.
Our tents were pitched two hundred yards from the Chung-tien road just within the edge of a stately, moss-draped forest. That night we celebrated with harmless bombs from the huge fires of bamboo stalks which exploded as they filled with steam and echoed among the trees like pistol shots. ”

“ Traveling southward for two days over bare brown mountain-sides, their monotony unrelieved except by groves of planted pine and fir trees, we descended abruptly into the great subtropical valley at Shih-tien.
Mile after mile this fertile plain stretches away in a succession of rice paddys and fields of sugar cane interspersed with patches of graceful bamboo, their summits drooping like enormous clusters of ostrich plumes; the air is warm and fragrant and the change from the surrounding hills is delightful. ”

“ Usually when they called, it was from the upper branches of a dead tree where they could not only scan every inch of the ground below, but were almost beyond the range of a shotgun. Sometimes we climbed upward almost on our hands and knees, grasping vines and creepers, drawing ourselves up by tree trunks, crawling under thorny shrubs and bushes, slipping, falling, scrambling through the indescribable tangle. We went forward only when the calls were echoing through the jungle, and stood - 256 - motionless as the wailing ceased. ”

“ In the morning when we see the first loads actually on the horses we ride off at the head of the caravan followed by a straggling line of mules and horses picking their way over the jagged stones of the road. It is delightful in the early morning for the air is fresh and brisk like that of October at home, but later in the day when the sun is higher it is uncomfortably hot, and we are glad to find a bit of shade where we can rest until the caravan arrives. ”

“ With our rifles ready and the electric lamp cutting a brilliant path in the darkness we walked slowly toward the edge of the sword grass hoping to see the flash of the tiger's eyes, but the beast backed off beyond the range of the light into an impenetrable tangle where we could not follow. ”

“ In the thick jungle only a few hundred yards from our camp on the Salween River I put up a silver pheasant (Euplocamus nycthemerus) , one of the earliest known and most beautiful species of the family Phasianidæ. Its white mantle, delicately vermiculated with black, extends like a wedding veil over the head, back and tail, in striking contrast to the blue-black underparts, red cheek patches, and red legs. ”

“ After breaking camp on the day following our departure from the "White Water" we rode along a broad trail through a beautiful pine forest and in the late morning stood on an open summit gazing on one of the most impressive sights which China has to offer. At the left, and a thousand feet below, the mighty Yangtze has broken through the mountains in a gorge almost a mile deep; a gorge which seems to have been carved out of the solid rock, sharp and clean, with a giant's knife. A few miles to the right the mountains widen, leaving a flat plain two hundred feet above the river. ”

“ Whenever we met tribesmen in Yün-nan who had not seen white persons they behaved much like all other natives. They were, of course, always greatly astonished to see our caravan descend upon them and were invariably fascinated by our guns, tents, and in fact everything about us, but were generally shy and decidedly less offensive in their curiosity than the Chinese of the larger inland towns to whom foreigners are by no means unknown. As a matter of fact we have found that our white skins, light eyes, and hair are a never failing source of interest and envy to almost all Orientals. ”

“ A man's chief concern is to leave male descendants to worship at his grave and appease his spirit. The more sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons who walk in his funeral procession, the more he is to be envied. As a missionary humorously says "the only law of God that ever has been obeyed in China is to be fruitful and multiply." Craving for progeny has brought into existence thousands upon thousands of human beings who exist on the very brink of starvation. Nowhere in the civilized world is there a more sordid and desperate struggle to maintain life or a more hopeless poverty. ”

“ What we could not get by bribery we tried to do by stealth and concealed ourselves behind bushes with the camera focused on a certain spot upon the road. The instant a Tibetan discovered it he would run like a - 180 - frightened deer and in some mysterious way they seemed to have passed the word along that our camp was a spot to be avoided. Sometimes a bottle was too great a temptation to be resisted, and one would stand timidly like a bird with wings half spread, only to dash away as though the devil were after him, when he saw my head disappear beneath the focusing hood. ”

“ This fine dog could be depended upon to dig out game if there was any in the mountains, but his life with us was short for he was killed by our first serow. Hotenfa was inconsolable and the tears he shed were in sincere sorrow for the loss of a faithful friend.
Almost every family owns a dog. Some of those we saw while passing through Chinese villages were nauseating in their unsightliness, for at least thirty per cent of them were more or less diseased. Barely able to walk, they would stagger across the street or lie in the gutter in indescribable filth. ”

“ Every morning the valley at Meng-ting was filled with a thick white mist and when we broke camp at daylight each mule was swallowed up in the fog as soon as it left the rice field. We followed the sound of the leader's bell, but not until ten o'clock was the entire caravan visible. For thirty U the valley is broad and flat as at Meng-ting and filled with a luxuriant growth of rank grass, but it narrows suddenly where the river has carved its way through a range of hills. ”

“ The temple was an excellent place for small mammals but it was evident that we would have to move high up on the slopes of the mountain if gorals and other big game were to be obtained. Accordingly, while Heller prepared a number of bat skins we started out on horse-back to hunt a camp site.
It was a glorious day with the sun shining brilliantly from a cloudless sky and just a touch of autumn snap in the air. We crossed the sloping rock-strewn plain to the base of the mountain, and discovered a trail which led up a forested shoulder to the right of the main peaks. ”

“ The Woman's College, which was opened recently in Foochow, is one of the finest buildings of the Republic, and when one sees its bright-faced girls dressed in their quaint little pajama-like garments, it is difficult to realize that outside such schools they are still slaves in mind and body to those iron rules of Confucius which have molded the entire structure of Chinese society for over 2400 years. ”

“ How we do sleep! It seems hardly an hour from the time we go to bed until we hear Wu rousing the servants, and the crackle of the camp-fire outside the tent. We half dress in our sleeping bags and with chattering teeth dash for the fire to lace our high boots in its comfortable warmth. ”

“ Palmer and Abertsen, gentlemen in the employ of the Chinese Customs, who had cared for our mail. Mr. Abertsen also sent a note telling us of a good hunting ground near Teng-yueh.
We spent an entire afternoon and evening over our letters and papers and, through them, began to get in touch with the world again. It is strange how little one misses the morning newspaper once one is beyond its reach and has properly adjusted one's mental perspective. And it is just as strange how essential it all seems immediately one is again within reach of such adjuncts of civilization. ”

“ Yün-nan means "south of the cloud" and every morning the peaks about us are shrouded in fog. Sometimes the veil-like mists still float about the mountain tops when we climb into them, and we are suddenly enveloped in a wet gray blanket which sends us shivering into the coats tied to our saddles.
For centuries this road has been one of the main trade arteries through the province, and with the total lack of conservation ideas so characteristic of the Chinese, every available bit of natural forest has been cut away. ”