THE CHINESE LION 



There existed in Peking in Kublai Khan's time small dogs 

 which so resembled lions that a Chinese historian in describing 

 the Imperial menagerie remarks that the lions are of the 

 same colour and astonishingly like the golden-coated nimble 

 dogs which are commonly bred by the people in their homes.* 



The following description of a fourteenth-century Imperial 

 hunt f seems worth quotation, though Marco Polo always 

 mistakes tigers for lions. " When the Great Khan (Magnus 

 Canis) goes a hunting 'tis thus ordered. At some twenty 

 days' journey from Cambalech (Peking) there is a fine forest 

 of eight days' journey in compass ; and in it are such multi- 

 tudes and varieties of animals as are truly wonderful. All 

 round this forest there be keepers posted on account of the 

 Khan, to take diligent charge thereof ; and every third or 

 fourth year he goeth with his people to this forest. On such 

 occasions they first surround the whole forest with beaters, 

 and let slip the dogs and the hawks trained to this sport, and 

 then, gradually closing in upon the game, they drive it to a 

 certain fine open spot that there is in the middle of the wood. 

 Here there becomes massed together an extraordinary multi- 

 tude of wild beasts, such as lions, wild oxen, bears, stags, 

 and a great variety of others, and all in a state of the greatest 

 alarm. For there is such a prodigious noise and uproar 

 raised by the birds and the dogs that have been let slip into 

 the wood, that a person cannot hear what his neighbour says ; 

 and all the unfortunate wild beasts quiver with terror at the 

 disturbance. And when they all have been driven together 

 into that open glade, the Great Khan comes up on three 

 elephants and shoots five arrows at the game." 



Chinese history relates in detail how two hundred and 

 fifty years later the Emperor Kang Hsi, with the aid of two 



Jih Hsia Chiu Wen K'ao. 



f " Cathay and the Way Thither," Yule. 



93 



