over the river, every beat of his stiff wing feathers
sounding like the motor of an aeroplane. Bamboo partridges called from the
bushes and dozens of unfamiliar bird notes filled the air.

At eleven o'clock on the following morning we passed two thatched huts in a
little clearing beside the trail and the guide remarked that our camping
place was not far away. We reached it shortly and were delighted. Two
enormous trees, like great umbrellas, spread a cool, dark shade above a
sparkling stream on the edge of an abandoned rice field. From a patch of
ground as level as a floor, where our tents were pitched, we could look
across the brown rice dykes to the enclosing walls of jungle and up to the
green mountain beyond. A half mile farther down the trail, but hidden away
in the jungle, lay a picturesque Shan village of a dozen huts, where the
guide said we should be able to find hunters.

As soon as tiffin was over we went up the creek with a bag of steel traps
to set them on the tiny trails which wound through the jungle in every
direction. Selecting a well-beaten patch we buried the trap in the center,
covered it carefully with leaves, and suspended the body of a bird or a
chunk of meat by a wire over the pan about three feet from the ground. A
light branch was fastened to the chain as a "drag." When the trap is pulled
this invariably catches in the grass or vines and, while holding the animal
firmly, still gives enough "spring" to prevent its freeing itself.

Trapping is exceedingly interesting for it is a contest of wits between the
trapper and the animal with the odds by no means in favor of the former.
The trap may not be covered in a natural way; the surroundings may be
unduly disturbed; a scent of human hands may linger about the bait, or
there may be numberless other possibilities to frighten the suspicious
animal.

In the evening our guide brought a strange individual whom he introduced as
the best hunter in the village. He was a tall Mohammedan Chinese who
dressed like a Shan and was married to a Shan woman. He seemed to be
afflicted with mental and physical inertia, for when he spoke it was in
slow drawl hardly louder than a whisper, and every movement of his body was
correspondingly deliberate. We immediately named him the "Dying Rabbit" but
discovered very shortly that he really had boundless energy and was an
excellent hunter.

The next morning he collected a dozen Shans for beaters and we drove a
patch of j