CHAPTER XX 



THE GAME OF THE PLAINS 

 By J. H. Miller 



In these days, when neither distance, nor time, nor hard- 

 ship deters the true big-game hunter from penetrating 

 to the most remote quarters of the globe in pursuit of 

 his hobby, and when new and untrodden hunting-grounds 

 are becoming scarcer year by year, it is of interest to 

 recount all the kinds of wild-game that roam the plains 

 of Dzungaria, which we crossed and recrossed during 

 our wanderings, and which, until we penetrated its 

 fastnesses, no white hunter had seriously exploited. 



In the spring of 1900 Messrs. Church and Phelps 

 travelled from Kulja to Urumchi, by the road which runs 

 along the southern borders of Dzungaria. The former, 

 in his interesting book, Chinese Turkestan, mentions what 

 he and his companions saw and heard of game on their 

 line of march, but with this exception , I am not aware of 

 any one having gone into the matter. Though ever- 

 increasing numbers of hunters yearly visit the Tekes 

 district of the Central Tian Shan, on the south, and, in a 

 less degree, the Little Altai on the north, this intervening 

 region has remained practically a terra incognita. The 

 few travellers who, from time to time, have crossed 

 portions of this country have merely hurried through, 



preferring to trust to the well-known sporting localities 



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