eping bags, but the trays of specimens brought forth an
active response. Here was something that was a part of their own
life--something they could understand. Mice and rabbits like these
they had seen in their own fields; that weasel was the same kind of
animal which sometimes stole their chickens. They pointed to the
rocks when they saw a red-legged partridge, and told us there were
many there; also pheasants.

Why we wanted the skins they could not understand, of course. I told
them that we would take them far away across the ocean to America
and put them in a great house as large as that hill across the
valley; but they smilingly shook their heads. The ocean meant
nothing to them, and as for a house as large as a hill--well, there
never could be such a place. They were perfectly sure of that.

We had come to Wu-tai-hai to hunt wapiti--_ma-lu_ (horse-deer) the
natives call them--and they assured us that we could find them on
the mountains behind the village. Only last night, said one of the
men, he had seen four standing on the hillside. Two had antlers as
long as that stick, but they were no good now--the horns were
hard--we should have come in the spring when they were soft. Then each
pair was worth $150, at least, and big ones even more. The doctors
make wonderful medicine from the horns--only a little of it would
cure any disease no matter how bad it was. They themselves could not
get the _ma-lu_, for the soldiers had long since taken away all
their guns, but they would show us where they were.

It was pleasant to hear all this, for we wanted some of those wapiti
very badly, indeed. It is one of the links in the chain of evidence
connecting the animals of the Old World and the New--the problem
which makes Asia the most fascinating hunting ground of all the
earth.

When the early settlers first penetrated the forests of America they
found the great deer which the Indians called "wapiti." It was
supposed for many years that it inhabited only America, but not long
ago similar deer were discovered in China, Manchuria, Korea,
Mongolia, Siberia, and Turkestan, where undoubtedly the American
species originated. Its white discoverers erroneously named the
animal "elk," but as this title properly belongs to the European
"moose," sportsmen have adopted the Indian name "wapiti" to avoid
confusion. Of course, changed environment developed different
"species" in all the animals which migrated from Asia either to
Europe