The Latin name for the wild ass, Equus kiang, indicates his close relationship to the horse, and "kiang" is what he is called by the people of Tibet. The wild ass is as large as an average mule, with well-developed ears, and a sharp sense of hearing; his tail is tufted at the end, and he is reddish-brown in colour, except on the legs and belly, where he is white. When he scents danger he snorts loudly, throws up his head, cocks his ears, and expands his nostrils; he is more like a fine ass than a horse, but when you see him wild and free on the salt plains of Tibet, the difference between him and an ass seems even greater than between an ass and a horse. My own horses and mules seemed sorry jades by the side of the "kiangs" of the desert.
On one occasion my Cossacks caught two small foals which as yet had no experience of life and the dangers of the desert. They stood tied up between the tents and made no attempt to escape. We gave them meal mixed with water, which they supped up eagerly, and we hoped that they would thrive and stay with us. When I saw how they pined for freedom, however, I wanted to restore them to the desert and to their mother's care. But it was too late; the mothers would have nothing to do with them after they had been in the hands of men, so we had to kill them to save them from the wolves. Thus strict is the law of the wilderness: a human hand is enough to break the spell of its freedom.
We cannot travel back to India without having become acquainted with the huge ox which runs wild over the loftiest mountains of Tibet. He is called "yak" in Tibetan, and the name has been transferred to most European languages. He is closely akin to the tame yak, but is larger and is always of a deep black colour; only when he is old does his head turn grey. The tame yak, on the other hand, is often white, brown, or mottled. Common to both are the peculiar form and the abundant wool. Seen from the side, the yak seems humpbacked. The back slopes down from the highest point, just over the forelegs, to the root of the tail, while the neck slopes down still more steeply to the scrag. The animal is exceedingly heavy, strong and ungainly, and the points of the thick horns are often worn and cracked in consequence of severe combats between the bulls.
As the yak lives in a temperature which in winter falls below the freezing-point of mercury (-40°), he needs a close warm coat and a protective layer of fat under the hide; and he is, in fact, so well provided with these that no cold on earth can affect him. When his breath hangs in clouds of steam round his nostrils he is in his element. Singular, too, are the fringes of wool a foot long which skirt the lower parts of his flanks and the upper parts of his forelegs. They may grow so long as to touch the ground as the yak walks. When he lies down on the stone-hard, frozen, and pebbly ground, these thick fringes serve as cushions, and on them he lies soft and warm.
On what do these huge fleshy animals live in a country where, broadly speaking, nothing grows and where a caravan may perish for want of fodder? It often happened that we would march for several days together without seeing a blade of grass. Then we might come to a valley with a little scanty hard yellow grass, but even if we stayed over a day the animals could not get nearly enough to eat. Not until we have descended to about 15,000 feet above sea-level do we find—and then only very seldom—a few small, miserable bushes; and to reach trees we must descend another 3000 feet lower. In the home of the wild yaks the ground is almost everywhere bare and barren, and yet these great beasts roam about and thrive excellently. They live on mosses and lichens, which they lick up with the tongue, and for this purpose their tongues are provided with hard, sharp, horny barbs like a thistle. In the same way they crop the velvety grass, less than half an inch high, which grows on the edges of the high alpine brooks, and which is so short that a horse cannot get hold of it.
On one occasion I made an excursion of several days from the main caravan, accompanied by only two men. One was an Afghan named Aldat. He was an expert yak-hunter, and used to sell the hides to merchants of Eastern Turkestan to be made into saddles and boots. We had encamped about 600 feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc, and the air was so rarefied that if we took even a few steps we suffered from difficulty in breathing and palpitation of the heart.
When the camp was ready, Aldat came and asked me to look at a large yak bull grazing on a slope above my tent. As we needed flesh and fat, I gave him permission to shoot it and to keep the hide. The bull had not noticed us, for he was to windward, and thought of nothing but the juicy moss. Water melted from the snow trickled among the stones, the wind blew cold, and the sky was overcast—true yak weather. With his gun on his back, Aldat crept up a hollow. At last he pushed himself along on his elbows and toes, crouching on the ground like a cat prowling after prey. At a distance of thirty paces he stopped behind a scarcely perceptible ridge of stones and took careful aim. The yak did not look up, not suspecting any danger. He had roamed about for fifteen years on these peaceful heights near the snow-line and had never seen a man. The shot cracked out and echoed among the mountains. The yak jumped into the air, took a few uncertain steps, stopped, reeled, tried to keep his balance, fell, lifted himself, but fell again heavily and helplessly to the ground, and lay motionless. It was stone dead, and in an hour was skinned and cut up.
This took place on September 9. On the 23rd of the same month the relations of the yak bull might have seen from a distance a strange procession. Some men carried a long object to the edge of a grave which had just been dug, lowered it into the trench, covered it with a skin coat, and filled in the grave with stones and earth. Into this simple mound was thrust a tent pole, with the wild yak's bushy tail fastened to the top; and the man who slumbered under the hillock was Aldat himself, the great yak-hunter.