84 BEASTS AND MEN 
haltering, and then drives out to pasture. At whatever 
hour of day or night he may arrive, the housewife (or should 
we say tentwife?) does all that can be done, in the preparation 
of food and a couch, to make him comfortable. 
At last.spring came upon the land; the snow melted, 
and the rivers ran free once more. Grieger soon discovered 
that the Zedzik-Noor was simply full of trout, of a large and 
palatable kind. So thick were they in the stream that they 
could be taken out by pulling a large vessel through the 
water; and one afternoon’s catch exceeded a hundred fish. 
These Grieger tried to cook by smoking over a fire ; but the 
first attempt was a failure, for the bodies fell into the fire, only 
the heads remaining suspended from the hooks. But neces- 
sity is the mother of invention ; and Grieger soon hit upon a 
method of cooking them. 
These operations were watched by the natives with horror 
and disgust ; for they class fish with snakes, and regard it as 
an unclean food. This, no doubt, was the cause of the ex- 
traordinary abundance of trout in the river when Grieger 
arrived. If the Mongolians shunned fish, they made up for 
it by their eagerness to obtain meat, and Grieger’s tent was 
surrounded by idlers and beggars on the look-out for pickings. 
To disperse these, who constituted a considerable nuisance, 
Grieger hit upon a very original plan. He took a piece of 
meat, and covered it thickly with pepper, an article of food 
unknown to the nomads. He then handed it out to them ; 
and as soon as they began to eat it, such a spluttering and 
sneezing took place that they hastily fled and did not trouble 
him again. Sausages he made of lungs and livers, but these, 
for some reason, the natives would not touch. Occasionally 
hunting brought in supplies. The great wild sheep, the argali, 
were an especial delicacy, the ten-year-old rams in particular. 
Now and again onions were found. In the Kobdo valleys, 
Grieger obtained a large collection of birds, including one 
species of pheasant, hitherto unknown. Birds, known to the 
natives as mountain- or rock-hens, were chased by the native 
