60 A MOUNTAIN VILLAGE AND TAI-PEI-SHAN 



for food. Wild pig are also to be found, but 

 though we came across their wallows we never 

 encountered the beast himself. 



On his first visit the doctor heard of a leopard 

 with some cubs close by. He sat over the den 

 and managed to capture the two young ones, but 

 the mother never returned. The cubs, after living 

 for a day or two, died. 



The Goral ( Urotragus goral) appears to be very 

 widely distributed. I saw a skin at Hwa-Shan, and 

 was told by a missionary there that he had seen 

 one. The weather being so bad at Lingtai-miao 

 during our stay, and the undergrowth so dense, 

 we decided not to hunt them there, as we were 

 confident of getting specimens farther west. This 

 turned out to be a mistake, as we never saw one in 

 Kansu at all. 



A few days after our arrival, some men, hear- 

 ing of our desire to hunt, came and offered their 

 services. We engaged two ; Yong, whose heart, 

 in the expressive Chinese phrase, was " not in the 

 centre," but the best takin hunter for miles, and 

 Lou-loo, an inveterate slacker, with an engaging 

 smile and magnificent calf development. He won 

 something of my liking, for though obsessed with 

 an abhorrence of any kind of work, the love of 

 hunting filled his mind to the exclusion of every- 

 thing else. Yong had been wounded years before 

 by a takin, which the natives consider a very 

 vicious animal. He had hit one and followed it 

 up, his old native gun still unloaded. According 

 to his own account, as he passed a rock the takin, 

 which had been lying in wait, dashed out and with 

 a twist of its head ripped his thigh open. The scar 



