222 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



ley walls or, in its uttermost limits, extended to Kwei- 

 hua-cheng, forty miles away. They knew, even, that 

 a "fire carriage" running on two rails of steel came 

 regularly to Feng-chen, four days' travel to the east, 

 but few of them had ever seen it. So it was almost 

 as unreal as stories of the war and aeroplanes and 

 automobiles. 



All the village gathered at the "American Lega- 

 tion" while we unpacked our carts. They gazed in 

 silent awe at our guns and cameras and sleeping bags, 

 but the trays of specimens brought forth an active re- 

 sponse. Here was something that was a part of their 

 own life — something they could understand. Mice and 

 rabbits like these they had seen in their own fields ; that 

 weasel was the same kind of animal which sometimes 

 stole their chickens. They pointed to the rocks when 

 they saw a red-legged partridge, and told us there were 

 many there ; also pheasants. 



Why we wanted the skins they could not understand, 

 of course. I told them that we would take them far 

 away across the ocean to America and put them in a 

 great house as large as that hill across the valley; but 

 they smilingly shook their heads. The ocean meant 

 nothing to them, and as for a house as large as a hill — 

 well, there never could be such a place. They were per- 

 fectly sure of that. 



We had come to Wu-tai-hai to hunt wapiti — ma-lu 

 (horse-deer) the natives call them — and they assured 

 us that we could find them on the mountains behind 

 the village. Only last night, said one of the men, he 



