42



Sydney Porter—Wanderings in the Far East



authorities because they thought that his passport might not be in

order ! When they saw it was, they told him he might retrace his foot¬

steps ! This journey takes months and costs a great deal of money.

Marauding bands of soldiers overrun the country killing, burning, and

looting ; in fact, in these districts one carries one’s life in his hands.

A base camp where the collector had, after a long period of trapping,

managed to collect a hundred White Crossoptilons, was raided by a

marauding army, many of the natives of the village were killed, the

huts burnt, all the Pheasants were killed and eaten, and had the

collector been there he would doubtless have been killed as well.


The birds are carried for many weeks in baskets by coolies over

hundreds of miles of wild country, until they reach the Yangtze-kiang,

and they then start a journey of a thousand miles or more by boat

down the river to the coast.


The cost of these expeditions, which can only be undertaken at a

great personal risk, is very heavy. And with the increasing political

strife in China the position will, in the course of time, become more and

more difficult. Even when one has made oneself secure with the local

war lord or general there is soon a rival upstart to propitiate.


The White Crossoptilons fight very badly and so must travel and

be housed separately, otherwise they kill and maim each other. Their

habitat is the rolling grasslands below the snow-line on the edge of the

higher forests at about 14,000 feet, but the birds move lower down in

the winter. They are in no way persecuted by the natives, even though

the birds occasionally make inroads into the natives’ grain fields when

they come down to the lower regions. Only four of these birds reached

Shanghai. These I saw. Of the Blue Crossoptilon I was told that of all

the Pheasants this is the wildest and wariest and its haunts the most

inaccessible to reach ; yet, strange to say, when domesticated it is

the tamest and most companionable. It roosts high up in the trees,

and upon the slightest disturbance it will hurtle itself into the air and

dash away with the most terrific speed. Owing to the value placed on

the beautiful decomposed silky central tail feathers, and also the broad

outer tail feathers which were used for stiffening purposes in the

clothes of the Chinese, the birds were extensively domesticated by the

natives in Western Szechuan. My informant stated that he had seen



