174 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



October first the specimens started southward on 

 camel back. Kublai Khan, my pony, went with them, 

 while we left in the Chinese Government motor cars. 

 For two hundred miles we rushed over the same plains 

 which, a few months earlier, we had laboriously crossed 

 with our caravan. Every spot was pregnant with de- 

 lightful memories. At this well we had camped for a 

 week and hunted antelope ; in that ragged mass of rocks 

 we had killed a wolf; out on the Turin plain we had 

 trapped twenty-six marmots in an enormous colony. 



Those had been glorious days and our hearts were sad 

 as we raced back to Peking and civilization. But one 

 bright spot remained — ^we need not yet leave our be- 

 loved East ! Far to the south, in brigand-infested moun- 

 tains on the edge of China, there dwelt a herd of bighorn 

 sheep, the argali of the Mongols. Among them was a 

 great ram, and we had learned his hiding place. How 

 we got him is another story. 



