170 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



traps or devices for catching animals which the Mon- 

 gols used; they seem to depend entirely upon their guns. 

 This is quite unlike the Chinese, Koreans, Manchus, 

 Malays, and other Orientals with whom I have hunted, 

 for they all have developed ingenious snares, pitfalls 

 and traps. 



The musk sac is present only in the male deer and is, 

 of course, for the purpose of attracting the does. Un- 

 fortunately, it is not possible to distinguish the sexes 

 except upon close examination, for both are hornless, 

 and as a result the natives sometimes kill females which 

 they would prefer to leave unmolested. 



The musk deer use their tusks for fighting and also 

 to dig up the food upon which they live. I frequently 

 found new pine cones which they had torn apart to get 

 at the soft centers. During the winter they develop an 

 exceedingly long, thick coat of hair which, however, is 

 so brittle that it breaks almost like dry pine needles; 

 consequently, the skins have but little commercial value. 



Late one rainy afternoon Tserin Dorchy and I rode 

 into a beautiful valley not far from where we were 

 camped. When well in the upper end, we left our horses 

 and proceeded on foot toward the summit of a ridge on 

 which he had killed a bear a month earlier. 



Motioning me to walk to the crest of the ridge from 

 the other side, the old man vanished like a ghost among 

 the trees. When I was nearly at the top I reached the 

 edge of a small patch of burned forest. In the half 

 darkness the charred stumps and skeleton trees were as 

 black as ebony. As I was about to move into the open 



