tail this hidden corner of the world. He can share with thousands
of city dwellers the joy of his hunt and teach them something of the
animals he loves and the lands they call their own.

To his scientific training he owes another source of pleasure. Every
animal is a step in the solution of some one of nature's problems.
Perhaps it is a new discovery, a species unknown to science. Asia is
full of such surprises--I have already found many. Be the specimen
large or small, if it has fallen to your trap or rifle, there is the
thrill of knowing that you have traced one more small line on the
white portion of nature's map.

While I was gazing at the fallen buck Tserin Dorchy stood like a
statue on the hilltop, scanning the forest and valley with the hope
that my shot had disturbed another animal. In a few moments he came
down to me. The old man had lost some of his accustomed calm and,
with thumb upraised, murmured, "_Sai_, _sai_." Then he gave, in
vivid pantomime, a recital of how he suddenly surprised the buck
feeding just below the hill crest and how he had seen me jerk the
glasses from my eyes and shoot.

Sitting down beside the deer we went through the ceremony of a
smoke. Then Tserin Dorchy eviscerated the animal, being careful to
preserve the heart, liver, stomach, and intestines. Like all other
Orientals with whom I have hunted, the Mongols boiled and ate the
viscera as soon as we reached camp and seemed to consider them an
especial delicacy.

Some weeks later we killed two elk and Tserin Dorchy inflated and
dried the intestines. These were to be used as containers for butter
and mutton fat. After tanning the stomach he manufactured from it a
bag to contain milk or other liquids. His wife showed me some really
beautiful leather which she had made from roebuck skins. Tanning
hides and making felt were the only strictly Mongolian industries
which we observed in the region visited by our expedition. The
Mongols do a certain amount of logging and charcoal burning and in
the autumn they cut hay; but with these exceptions we never saw them
do any work which could not be done from horseback.

Our first hunting trip lasted ten days and in the following months
there were many others. We became typical nomads, spending a day or
two in some secluded valley only to move again to other hunting
grounds. For the time we were Mongols in all essentials. The
primitive instincts, which lie just below the surface in us all,
respo