re, we decided to shift camp to the wapiti country,
fifty miles away hoping that by the time we reached there, we both
would be fit again.

CHAPTER XVI

THE "HORSE-DEER" OF SHANSI

All the morning our carts had bumped and rattled over the stones in
a somber valley one hundred and fifty _li_ from where we had killed
the sheep [Footnote: A _li_ equals about one-third of a mile]. With
every mile the precipitous cliffs pressed in more closely upon us
until at last the gorge was blocked by a sheer wall of rock. Our
destination was a village named Wu-tai-hai, but there appeared to be
no possible place for a village in that narrow canyon.

We were a quarter of a mile from the barrier before we could
distinguish a group of mud-walled huts, seemingly plastered against
the rock like a collection of swallows' nests. No one but a Chinese
would have dreamed of building a house in that desolate place. It
was Wu-tai-hai, without a doubt, and Harry and I rode forward to
investigate.

At the door of a tiny hut we were met by one of our Chinese
taxidermists. He ushered us into the court and, with a wave of his
hand, announced, "This is the American Legation." The yard was a
mass of straw and mud. From the gaping windows of the house bits of
torn paper fluttered in the wind; inside, at one end of the largest
room, was a bed platform made of mud; at the other, a fat mother hog
with five squirming "piglets" sprawled contentedly on the dirt
floor. Six years before Colonel (then Captain) Thomas Holcomb, of
the United States Marine Corps, had spent several days at this but
while hunting elk. Therefore, it will be known to Peking Chinese
until the end of time as the "American Legation."

An inspection of the remaining houses in the village disclosed no
better quarters, so our boys ousted the sow and her family, swept
the house, spread the _kang_ and floor with clean straw, and pasted
fresh paper over the windows. We longed to use our tents, but there
was nothing except straw or grass to burn, and cooking would be
impossible. The villagers were too poor to buy coal from
Kwei-hua-cheng, forty miles away, and there was not a sign of wood on
the bare, brown hills.

At the edge of the _kang_, in these north Shansi houses, there is
always a clay stove which supports a huge iron pot. A hand bellows
is built into the side of the stove, and by feeding straw or grass
with one hand and energetically manipulating the bellows with the
other,