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ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS
ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS
ASSOCIATE CURATOR OF MAMMALS IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, AND LEADER OF THE MUSEUM'S SECOND ASIATIC EXPEDITION. AUTHOR OF "WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA," "CAMPS AND TRAILS IN CHINA," ETC. PHOTOGRAPHS BY YVETTE BORUP ANDREWS Photographer of the Second Asiatic Expedition D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK: LONDON: MCMXXI COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO Dr. J. A. ALLEN WHO, THROUGH HIS PROF
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PREFACE
PREFACE
During 1916-1917 the First Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History carried on zoölogical explorations along the frontiers of Tibet and Burma in the little known province of Yün-nan, China. The narrative of that expedition has already been given to the public in the first boot of this series "Camps and Trails in China." It was always the intention of the American Museum to continue the Asiatic investigations, and my presence in China on other work in 1918 gave the desired opp
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The romantic story of the Mongols and their achievements has been written so completely that it is unnecessary to repeat it here even though it is as fascinating as a tale from the Arabian Nights . The present status of the country, however, is but little known to the western world. In a few words I will endeavor to sketch the recent political developments, some of which occurred while we were in Mongolia. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the great Genghiz Khan and his illustrious success
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
ENTERING THE LAND OF MYSTERY Careering madly in a motor car behind a herd of antelope fleeing like wind-blown ribbons across a desert which isn't a desert, past caravans of camels led by picturesque Mongol horsemen, the Twentieth Century suddenly and violently interjected into the Middle Ages, should be contrast and paradox enough for even the most blase sportsman. I am a naturalist who has wandered into many of the far corners of the earth. I have seen strange men and things, but what I saw on
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
SPEED MARVELS OF THE GOBI DESERT The next morning, ten miles from camp, we passed a party of Russians en route to Kalgan. They were sitting disconsolately beside two huge cars, patching tires and tightening bolts. Their way had been marked by a succession of motor troubles and they were almost discouraged. Woe to the men who venture into the desert with an untried car and without a skilled mechanic! There are no garages just around the corner—and there are no corners. Lucander's Chinese boy expr
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS This is a "hard luck" chapter. Stories of ill-fortune are not always interesting, but I am writing this one to show what can happen to an automobile in the Gobi. We had gone to Urga without even a puncture and I began to feel that motoring in Mongolia was as simple as riding on Fifth Avenue—more so, in fact, for we did not have to watch traffic policemen or worry about "right of way." There is no crowding on the Gobi Desert. When we passed a camel caravan or a train of ox-
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
NEW TRAVELS ON AN OLD TRAIL The winter of 1918-19 we spent in and out of one of the most interesting cities in the world. Peking, with its background of history made vividly real by its splendid walls, its age-old temples and its mysterious Forbidden City, has a personality of its own. When we had been away for a month or two there was always a delightful feeling of anticipation in returning to the city itself and to our friends in its cosmopolitan community. Moreover, at our house in Wu Liang T
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
ANTELOPE MOVIE STARS It was eight o'clock before we finished breakfast in the morning, but we did not wish to begin the motion picture photography until the sun was high enough above the horizon to give us a clear field for work. Charles and I rigged the tripod firmly in the tonneau of one of the cars. Mrs. Mac and Wang, a Chinese driver, were in the front seat, while Yvette and I squeezed in beside the camera. The Coltmans, Mac, and Owen occupied the other motor. We found a herd of antelope wit
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
THE SACRED CITY OF THE LIVING BUDDHA Far up in northern Mongolia, where the forests stretch in an unbroken line to the Siberian frontier, lies Urga, the Sacred City of the Living Buddha. The world has other sacred cities, but none like this. It is a relic of medieval times overlaid with a veneer of twentieth-century civilization; a city of violent contrasts and glaring anachronisms. Motor cars pass camel caravans fresh from the vast, lone spaces of the Gobi Desert; holy lamas, in robes of flamin
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
THE LONG TRAIL TO SAIN NOIN KHAN Our arrival in Urga was in the most approved manner of the twentieth century. We came in motor cars with much odor of gasoline and noise of horns. When we left the sacred city we dropped back seven hundred years and went as the Mongols traveled. Perhaps it was not quite as in the days of Genghis Khan, for we had three high-wheeled carts of a Russian model, but they were every bit as springless and uncomfortable as the palanquins of the ancient emperors. Of course
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
THE LURE OF THE PLAINS On Monday, June 16, we left Urga to go south along the old caravan trail toward Kalgan. Only a few weeks earlier we had skimmed over the rolling surface in motor cars, crossing in one day then as many miles of plains as our own carts could do in ten. But it had another meaning to us now, and the first night as we sat at dinner in front of the tent and watched the after-glow fade from the sky behind the pine-crowned ridge of the Bogdo-ol, we thanked God that for five long m
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
HUNTING ON THE TURIN PLAIN After ten days we left the "Antelope Camp" to visit the Turin plain where we had seen much game on the way to Urga. One by one our Mongol neighbors rode up to say "farewell," and each to present us with a silk scarf as a token of friendship and good will. We received an invitation to stop for tea at the yurt of an old man who had manifested an especial interest in us, but it was a very dirty yurt , and the preparations for tea were so uninviting that we managed to exit
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
AN ADVENTURE IN THE LAMA CITY Late on a July afternoon my wife and I stood disconsolately in the middle of the road on the outskirts of Urga. We had halted because the road had ended abruptly in a muddy river. Moreover, the river was where it had no right to be, for we had traveled that road before and had found only a tiny trickle across its dusty surface. We were disconsolate because we wished to camp that night in Urga, and there were abundant signs that it could not be done. At least the Mon
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
MONGOLS AT HOME Until we left Urga the second time Mongolia, to us, had meant only the Gobi Desert and the boundless, rolling plains. When we set our faces northward we found it was also a land of mountains and rivers, of somber forests and gorgeous flowers. A new forest always thrills me mightily. Be it of stately northern pines, or a jungle tangle in the tropics, it is so filled with glamour and mystery that I enter it with a delightful feeling of expectation. There is so much that is conceale
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
NOMADS OF THE FOREST Three days after the field meet we left with Tserin Dorchy and two other Mongols for a wapiti hunt. We rode along the Terelche River for three miles, sometimes splashing through the soggy edges of a marsh, and again halfway up a hillside where the ground was firm and hard; then, turning west on a mountain slope, we came to a low plateau which rolled away in undulating sweeps of hush-land between the edges of the dark pine woods. It was a truly boreal landscape; we were on th
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
THE PASSING OF MONGOLIAN MYSTERY I know of no other country about which there is so much misinformation as about Mongolia. Because the Gobi Desert stretches through its center the popular conception appears to be that it is a waste of sand and gravel incapable of producing anything. In the preceding chapters I have attempted to give a picture of the country as we found it and, although our interests were purely zoölogical, I should like to present a few notes regarding its commercial possibiliti
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT RAM OF THE SHANSI MOUNTAINS Away up in northern China, just south of the Mongolian frontier, is a range of mountains inhabited by bands of wild sheep. They are wonderful animals, these sheep, with horns like battering-rams. But the mountains are also populated by brigands and the two do not form an agreeable combination from the sportsman's standpoint. In reality they are perfectly nice, well-behaved brigands, but occasionally they forget their manners and swoop down upon the caravan r
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
MONGOLIAN ARGALI Although we had seen nearly a dozen sheep where we killed our first three rams, the mountains were deserted when Harry returned the following morning. He hunted faithfully, but did not see even a roebuck; the sheep all had left for other feeding grounds. I remained in camp to superintend the preparation of our specimens. The next day we had a glorious hunt. By six o'clock we were climbing the winding, white trail west of camp, and for half an hour we stood gazing into the gloomy
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
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. [2] A li equals about one-third of a mile. We were a quarter of a
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
WAPITI, ROEBUCK, AND GORAL After the first day we left the "American Legation" and moved camp to one of two villages at the upper end of the valley about a mile nearer the hunting grounds. There were only half a dozen huts, but they were somewhat superior to those of Wu-tai-hai, and we were able to make ourselves fairly comfortable. The usual threshing floor of hard clay adjoined each house, and all day we could hear the steady beat, beat, beat, of the flails pounding out the wheat. The grain wa
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
WILD PIGS—ANIMAL AND HUMAN Shansi Province is famous for wild boar among the sportsmen of China. In the central part there are low mountains and deep ravines thickly forested with a scrub growth of pine and oak. The acorns are a favorite food of the pigs, and the pigs are a favorite food of the Chinese—and of foreigners, too, for that matter. No domestic pork that I have ever tasted can excel a young acorn-fed wild pig! Even a full-grown sow is delicious, but beware of an old boar; not only is h
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
THE GREAT PARK OF THE EASTERN TOMBS The sunshine of an early spring day was flooding the flower-filled courtyards of Duke Tsai Tse's palace in Peking when Dr. G. D. Wilder, Everett Smith, and I alighted from our car at the huge brass-hound gate. We came by motor instead of rickshaw, for we were on an official visit which had been arranged by the American Minister. We would have suffered much loss of "face" had we come in any lesser vehicle than an automobile, for we were to be received by a "Roy
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