son Oliver to a Taoist temple seven miles away in a lonely ravine known as
Chi-yuen-kang. The walk to the temple in the early morning was delightful.
The "bamboo chickens" and francolins were calling all about us and on the
way we shot enough for our first day's dinner. Both these birds are
abundant in Fukien Province but it is by no means easy to kill them for
they live in such thick cover that they can only be flushed with
difficulty.

Early in the morning we frequently heard the francolins crowing in the
trees or on the top of a hill and when a cock had taken possession of such
a spot the intrusion of another was almost sure to cause trouble which only
ended when one of them had been driven off.

For two miles and a half the Big Ravine is a narrow cut between
perpendicular rock walls thickly clothed to their very summits with bamboo
and a tangle of thorny vines. In the bottom of the gorge a mountain torrent
foams among huge bowlders but becomes a gentle, slow moving stream when it
leaves the cool darkness of the canon to spread itself over the terraced
rice fields.

About a mile from the entrance two old temples nestle into the hillside.
One stands just over the water, but the other clings to the rock wall three
hundred feet above the river, and it was there that we made our camp.

The old priest in charge did not appear especially delighted to see us
until I slipped a Mexican dollar into his hand--then it was laughable to
see his change of face. The far end of the balcony was given up to us while
Mr. Caldwell and Oliver put up their beds at the feet of a grinning idol in
the main temple.

We had come to Chi-yuen-kang to hunt serow (_see_ Chapter XVII) and had
brought with us only a few traps for small mammals. Harry had seen several
serow exhibited for sale on market days in towns along the river, and all
were reported to have been killed near this ravine. There was a village of
considerable size at the upper end and here we collected a motley lot of
beaters with half a dozen dogs to drive the top of a mountain which towered
about two thousand five hundred feet above the river.

Never will we forget that climb! We tried to start at daylight but it was
well toward six o'clock before we got our men together. A Chinaman would
drive an impatient man to apoplexy and an early grave for it is well-nigh
impossible to get him started within an hour of the appointed time, and
with a half dozen the difficulty is multipli