Big Game of Mongolia and Tibet 



From remote antiquity hunting has been a 

 favorite pastime of the emperors of China, 

 but at no time has it been conducted with such 

 magnificence as under the Mongol dynasty in 

 the thirteenth century and during the reigning 

 Manchu one. 



Marco Polo's account of a hunt of Kublai 

 Khan reads like a fairy tale. The Emperor 

 left his capital every year in March for a hunt- 

 ing expedition in Mongolia, accompanied by all 

 his barons, thousands of followers and innu- 

 merable beaters. " He took with him," says 

 Polo, "fully 10,000 falconers and some 500 

 gerfalcons, besides peregrines, sakers and 

 other hawks in great numbers, including gos- 

 hawks, to fly at the waterfowl. He had also 

 numbers of hunting leopards {cheetah) and 

 lynxes, lions, leopards, wolves and eagles, 

 trained to catch boars and wild cattle, bears, 

 wild asses, stags, wolves, foxes, deer and wild 

 goats, and other great and fierce beasts. 



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