YAKS GRAZING.
Big Game of Mongolia and Tibet
From remote antiquity hunting has been a favorite pastime of the emperors of China, but at no time has it been conducted with such magnificence as under the Mongol dynasty in the thirteenth century and during the reigning Manchu one.
Marco Polo's account of a hunt of Kublai Khan reads like a fairy tale. The Emperor left his capital every year in March for a hunting expedition in Mongolia, accompanied by all his barons, thousands of followers and innumerable beaters. "He took with him," says Polo, "fully 10,000 falconers and some 500 gerfalcons, besides peregrines, sakers and other hawks in great numbers, including goshawks, to fly at the waterfowl. He had also numbers of hunting leopards (cheetah) and lynxes, lions, leopards, wolves and eagles, trained to catch boars and wild cattle, bears, wild asses, stags, wolves, foxes, deer and wild goats, and other great and fierce beasts.
"The Emperor himself is carried upon four elephants in a fine chamber, made of timber, lined inside with plates of beaten gold and outside with lions' skins. And sometimes, as they may be going along, and the Emperor from his chamber is holding discourse with the barons, one of the latter shall exclaim: 'Sire, look out for cranes!' Then the Emperor instantly has the top of his chamber thrown open, and, having marked the cranes, he casts one of his gerfalcons, whichever he pleases; and often the quarry is struck within his view, so that he has the most exquisite sport and diversion there, as he sits in his chamber or lies on his bed; and all the barons with him get the enjoyment of it likewise. So it is not without reason I tell you that I do not believe there ever existed in the world, or ever will exist, a man with such sport and enjoyment as he has, or with such rare opportunities."
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Emperor K'ang-hsi, Father Gérbillon followed the Emperor several times on his hunting expeditions into Mongolia, and has told us in his accounts of these journeys of the enthusiasm and skill displayed by the Emperor in the pursuit of game, which he usually shot with arrows, though he also had hawks and greyhounds with him.