heading
diagonally toward the gazelles he would always attempt to follow the
herd. When it was time to stop I would have to put all my strength
upon the reins and the horse would come into a slow gallop and then
a trot. Seconds of valuable time would be wasted before I could
begin to shoot. I tried half a dozen other ponies, but they were all
as bad. They did not have the intelligence or the love of hunting
which made Kublai Khan so valuable.

The morning after encountering the great herd, we camped at a well
thirty miles north of the Turin monastery. Three or four _yurts_
were scattered about, and a caravan of two hundred and fifty camels
was resting in a little hollow. From the door of our tent we could
see the blue summit of the Turin "mountain," and have in the
foreground a perpetual moving picture of camels, horses, sheep,
goats, and cattle seeking water. All day long hundreds of animals
crowded about the well, while one or two Mongols filled the troughs
by means of wooden buckets.

The life about the wells is always interesting, for they are points
of concentration for all wanderers on the plains. Just as we pitch
our tents and make ourselves at home, so great caravans arrive with
tired, laden camels. The huge brutes kneel, while their packs are
being removed, and then stand in a long line, patiently waiting
until their turn comes to drink. Groups of ten or twelve crowd about
the trough; then, majestically swinging their padded feet, they move
slowly to one side, kneel upon the ground, and sleepily chew their
cuds until all the herd has joined them. Sometimes the caravans wait
for several days to rest their animals and let them feed; sometimes
they vanish in the first gray light of dawn.

On the Turin plain we had a delightful glimpse of antelope babyhood.
The great herds which we had found were largely composed of does
just ready to drop their young, and after a few days they scattered
widely into groups of from five to twenty.

We found the first baby antelope on June 27. We had seen half a
dozen females circling restlessly about, and suspected that their
fawns could not be far away. Sure enough, our Mongol discovered one
of the little fellows in the flattest part of the flat plain. It was
lying motionless with its neck stretched out, just where its mother
had told it to remain when she saw us riding toward her.

Yvette called to me, "Oh, please, please catch it. We can raise it
on milk and it will make