Lolos Seeing Their Photographs for the First Time
Yvette usually excited the most curiosity, especially among the women, and as she wore knickerbockers and a flannel shirt there were times when the determination of her sex seemed to call forth the liveliest discussion. Her long hair, however, usually settled the matter, and then the women had decided the question of gender satisfactorily they often made timid, and most amusing, advances. One woman said she greatly admired her fair complexion and asked how many baths she took to keep her skin so white. Another wondered whether it was necessary to ever comb her hair and almost everyone wished to feel her clothes and shoes. She always would command more attention than anyone else by her camera operations, and a group would stand in speechless amazement to see her dodge in and out of the portable dark room when she was developing photographs or loading plates.
We made arrangements to go with a number of the Lolos to a spot fifteen miles away on the Chung-tien road to hunt wapiti (probably Cervus macneilli) which the natives call maloo. Our American wapiti, or elk, is a migrant from Asia by way of the Bering Strait and is probably a relative of the wapiti which is found in Central Asia, China, Manchuria and Korea.
At present these deer are abundant in but few places. Throughout the Orient, and especially in China, the growing horns when they are soft, or in the "velvet," are considered of great medicinal value and, during the summer, the animals are trapped and hunted relentlessly by the natives. In Yün-nan, when we were there, a pair of horns were worth $100 (Mexican).
Thanksgiving morning dawned gray and raw with occasional flurries of haillike snow, but we did not heed the cold, for the trail led over two high ridges and along the rim of a tremendous gorge. To the south the white summits of the Snow Mountain range towered majestically above the surrounding peaks and, in the gray light, the colors were beautiful beyond description. To the north we could see heavily wooded mountain slopes interspersed with open parklike meadows—splendid wapiti country.
Our tents were pitched two hundred yards from the Chung-tien road just within the edge of a stately, moss-draped forest. That night we celebrated with harmless bombs from the huge fires of bamboo stalks which exploded as they filled with steam and echoed among the trees like pistol shots. Marco Polo speaks of the same phenomenon which he first witnessed in this region over six hundred and thirty years ago.
About nine o'clock in the evening we ran our traps with a lantern and besides several mice (Apodemus) found two rare shrews and a new mole (Blarina). I went out with the hunters at dawn but saw nothing except an old wapiti track and a little sign. All during the following day a dense fog hung close to the ground so that it was impossible to hunt, and, on the night of December 2, it snowed heavily. The morning began bright and clear but clouded about ten o'clock and became so bitterly cold that the Lolos would not hunt. They really suffered considerably and that night they all left us to return to their homes. We were greatly disappointed, for we had brilliant prospects of good wapiti shooting but without either men or dogs and in an unknown country there was little possibility of successful still hunting.
The mafus were very much worried and refused to go further north. They were certain that we would not be able to cross the high passes which lay between us and the Mekong valley far to the westward and complained unceasingly about the freezing cold and the lack of food for their animals. It was necessary to visit the Mekong River, for even though it might not be a good big game region it would give us a cross-section, as it were, of the fauna and important data on the distribution of small mammals. Therefore we decided to leave for the long ride as soon as the weather permitted.
CHAPTER XXII
STALKING TIBETANS WITH A CAMERA