KIRGHIZ PHEASANT 97 



the east from the Chinese pheasant (P,c. torquatus) and its variety (hage^tbecki) of the 

 Kobdo country. 



*' During a winter spent in Central Asia in company with my friend, Mr. J. H. 

 Miller, we had many opportunities of seeing and shooting the true Mongolian pheasant 

 in its natural haunts. Close to Kuldja — in the Hi valley — where we wintered, however, 

 pheasants are not to be found in any considerable quantity. On the lower Hi, where 

 immense reed beds give them the necessary cover, they exist, I believe, in great 

 numbers ; but without a knowledge of the country and good dogs the hunter would 

 not do very well. It is in the upper valleys, such as the Tekes and Kash, where a 

 narrow zone of thorn scrub and thickets lines the river-banks, that the best shooting is 

 to be obtained. 



"In its wild state the pheasant inhabits a great variety of country. I have shot 

 them in Bokhara, on tamarisk-covered sand-dunes, where the birds had never seen a 

 tree in the course of their whole existence. In other places they inhabit vast reed beds, 

 half under water ; again, in others they keep almost entirely to the cultivated oasis, and 

 they swarm in the jungles, thickets and poplar forests which line the rivers at any 

 altitude up to 4,000 feet. 



*' I set out one wintry morning, with a native servant and a spare horse laden with 

 food, cartridges and blankets to ride up into the valley of the Kash, right affluent of 

 the Hi. Now, if in this country the shooting is free, and there are no licences to be 

 taken out or keepers to tip, yet, on the other hand, one has to work for the sport, and 

 the payment will probably be a couple of days' hard riding in the cold to and from one's 

 shooting ground and uncomfortable nights spent in dirty caravanserais. 



" I rode 200 lis (or sixty-six miles) in the two short winter days, and at the dusk 

 of the second day arrived on the south bank of the Kash river. Here, finding a 

 Taranchi settler, I housed myself and my horses in his mud-built dwelling. In one 

 tiny room my host and his girl wife, a baby, my servant and myself ate and slept. 

 This, my shooting lodge for the time being, was isolated, but for two or three hovels 

 near by, and, being far away from the villages of the middle Kash, and cut off by the 

 swiftly flowing river from the Kirghiz and Kalmuck encarhpments on the northern side 

 of the valley, was an ideal centre to shoot from. The Kash valley here was a wide 

 steppe valley bordered on the north and south by mountain ranges, and, moreover, cut 

 off from the Hi valley by a barrier of low but rugged hills, through which the river has 

 cut a deep gorge. Thus the upper part of the Kash valley is more or less shut in and 

 isolated, and the pheasant grounds do not connect with those of the Hi. On this 

 account, too, it is somewhat more sheltered, and therefore warmer than the main valley. 

 The river is broad and very swiftly flowing, which no doubt accounts for the fact that 

 in mid-December it was not frozen over. High banks of ice lined the torrent, which 

 made it most difficult to cross, and, indeed, the only possible crossings were in those 

 places where rocks had caused the ice to jamb, and a narrow bridge had been formed 

 by the blocks freezing together. The river-banks were fringed with a zone of wood- 

 land, thorn scrub and small reed beds. The trees (poplars) attained a great size, and 

 this gave the pheasant-ground an almost English aspect, and many a bit might have 

 been in the coverts at home. A mile-wide zone of this game-haunted jungle along the 

 river gave me almost unlimited area to hunt over. 



VOL. Ill o 



