scinating as were the tombs, we were really
concerned with the "hinterland," the hunting park itself. Sixty
miles to the north, but still within the walls, are towering
mountains and glorious forests; these were what we had come to see.

All day, behind three tiny donkeys, we followed a tortuous, foaming
stream in the bottom of a splendid valley, ever going upward. At
night we slept in the open, and next day crossed the mountain into a
forest of oak and pine sprinkled with silver birches. Hundreds of
wood-cutters passed us on the trail, each carrying a single log upon
his back. Before we reached the village of Shing Lung-shan we came
into an area of desolation. Thousands of splendid trees were lying
in a chaos of charred and blackened trunks. It was the wantonness of
it all that depressed and horrified me.

The reason was perfectly apparent. On every bit of open ground
Manchu farmers were at work with plow and hoe. The land was being
cleared for cultivation, regardless of all else. North China has
very little timber--so little, in fact, that one longs passionately
to get away from the bare hills. Yet in this forest-paradise the
trees were being sacrificed relentlessly simply to obtain a few more
acres on which the farmer could grow his crops. If it had to be
done--and Heaven knows it need not have been--the trees might have
been utilized for timber. Many have been cut, of course, but
thousands upon thousands have been burned simply to clear the
hillside.

At Shing Lung-shan we met our hunters and continued up the valley
for three hours. With every mile there were fewer open spaces; we
had come to a region of vast mountains, gloomy valleys, and heavy
forests. The scenery was superb! It thrilled me as did the mountains
of Yuen-nan and the gorges of the Yangtze. Yet all this grandeur is
less than one hundred miles from Peking!

On a little ridge between two foaming streams we made our camp in
the forest. From the door of the tent we could look over the tops of
the trees into the blue distance of the valley; behind us was a wall
of forests broken only by the winding corridor of the mountain
torrent.

We had come to the _Tung Ling_ especially to obtain specimens of the
sika deer (_Cervus hortulorum_) and the Reeves's pheasant
(_Syrmaticus reevesi_). The former, a noble animal about the size of
our Virginia deer in America, has become exceedingly rare in north
China. The latter, one of the most beautiful of living bird