THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
a successful hunt. This joint for some reason is supposed to possess greater 
medicinal virtue than any other, and the shoulder blade ground to powder 
is a certain cure in the most advanced stages of insanity! 
When a tiger is killed notice is at once sent to the elders of all villages 
within a radius of five miles and the body is brought in whole to the village 
one is staying in. 
On the arrival of the elders an almost interminable wrangle ensues as to 
who are to be the privileged half-dozen to partake of a cupful of the 
ambrosial liquid left in the abdominal cavity, after the removal of the 
intestines. When that is settled the gralloch begins. 
To see semi -naked or naked savages carousing on such filth is bad 
enough; but to witness refined and most courteous, white-robed old 
gentlemen, as many of the villagers in Korea are, drinking it with apparent 
relish causes one’s very gorge to rise. 
Among both Chinese and Koreans, tiger’s blood is believed to have an 
extraordinarily rejuvenating effect, greater even than the highly prized 
wapiti or sika horn, dried when in the velvet, and afterwards ground to 
powder. One of the old gentlemen referred to above a few days afterwards 
confessed to me he had found his cupful very hard to swallow, but that there 
could be no doubt of its efficacy. 
Of the twenty odd skins I have seen in South Korea all have been much 
darker in colour than the half-dozen brought for my inspection in East 
Siberia, and I was informed by hunters and fur dealers there that the colour 
varied very little in these northern latitudes. In Seoul and Gensan I have 
seen both dark and pale skins, though I am told that the pale variety 
predominate. To my mind the darker furs, though perhaps not quite so 
thick or so long in fur as the lighter, are by far the handsomer trophy of 
the two. The skins coming from Pekin are mostly of the darker shade, 
and just now Messrs Rowland Ward have some magnificent specimens 
which have come into the market from the province of Shansi. 
I am inclined to think that the tigers living in Siberia and Manchuria 
have a slight advantage in size over those whose range lies further south. 
I have never seen any skins of extraordinary size in Seoul, Gensan or 
Mokpo, though one sometimes hears of these measuring 12 ft. or more 
from tip of nose to end of tail; but from all I could learn the natural shape 
in such cases had been entirely sacrificed in process of drying out. On the 
other hand, one I killed in 1903 measured as he fell 9 ft. 7 in. between sticks, 
and the hunters, who seldom belittle an animal they have helped to bag, 
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