e Mongols in their blazing
robes and pointed yellow hats, the women, flashing with "jewels" and
silver, the half-wild chant, and the rush of horses, gave a barbaric
touch which thrilled and fascinated us. We could picture this same
scene seven hundred years ago, for it is an ancient custom which has
come down from the days of Kublai Khan. It was as though the veil of
centuries had been lifted for a moment to allow us to carry away, in
motion pictures, this drama of Mongolian life.

CHAPTER XII

NOMADS OF THE FOREST

Three days after the field meet we left with Tserin Dorchy and two
other Mongols for a wapiti hunt. We rode along the Terelche River
for three miles, sometimes splashing through the soggy edges of a
marsh, and again halfway up a hillside where the ground was firm and
hard; then, turning west on a mountain slope, we came to a low
plateau which rolled away in undulating sweeps of bush-land between
the edges of the dark pine woods. It was a truly boreal landscape;
we were on the edge of the forest, which stretches in a vast,
rolling sea of green far beyond the Siberian frontier.

From the summit of the table-land we descended between dark walls of
pine trees to a beautiful valley filled with parklike openings. Just
at dark Tserin Dorchy turned abruptly into the stream and crossed to
a pretty grove of spruces on a little island formed by two branches
of the river. It was as secluded as a cavern, and made an ideal
place in which to camp. A hundred feet away the tent was invisible
and, save for the tiny wreaths of smoke which curled above the
tree-tops, there was no sign of our presence there.

After dinner Tserin Dorchy shouldered a pack of skins and went to a
"salt lick" in a meadow west of camp to spend the night. He returned
in the first gray light of dawn, just as I was making coffee, and
reported that he had heard wapiti barking, but that no animals had
visited the lick. He directed me to go along the hillsides north of
camp, while the Mongol hunters struck westward across the mountains.

I had not been gone an hour, and had just worked across the lower
end of a deep ravine, when I heard a wapiti bark above and behind
me. It was a hoarse roar, exactly like a roebuck, except that it was
deeper toned and louder. I was thrilled as though by an electric
current. It seemed very far away, much farther than it really was,
and as I crept to the summit of a ridge a splendid bull wapiti broke
through the und