n quick succession just above our heads, and we climbed hurriedly
out of the gorge.

Heller shouted that he had fired at a huge sambur running along the edge of
a bean field but the animal showed no sign of being hit. We easily picked
up the trail in the soft earth and in a few moments found several drops of
blood, showing that at least one bullet had found its mark. The blood soon
ceased and we began to wonder if the sambur had not been merely scratched.

Heller had seen the deer disappear in a second ravine, a branch of the one
out of which it had first been driven, and while he watched the upper side
I worked my way to the bottom to look for tracks. A few moments later the
natives began to shout excitedly just above me, and Heller called out that
they had found the deer, which was lying stone dead half way down the side
of the gorge in a mass of thick ferns. The sambur had been hit only once
but the powerful Savage bullet had crashed through the shoulder into the
lungs; it was quite sufficient to do the work even on such a huge animal
and the deer had run less than one hundred yards from the place where it
had been shot.

It was a splendid male, carrying a magnificent pair of antlers which
measured twenty-seven inches in length. The deer was about the size of an
American wapiti, or elk, and must have weighed at least seven hundred
pounds, for it required eight men to lift it. The Chinese hunters were wild
with excitement, but especially so when we began to eviscerate the animal,
for they wished to save the blood which is considered of great medicinal
value. They filled caps, sacks, bamboo joints, and every receptacle which
they could find after each man had drunk all he could possibly force down
his throat and had eaten the huge clots which choked the thorax.

When the sambur was brought to camp a regular orgy was held by our
servants, _mafus_, and dozens of villagers who gathered to buy, beg, or
steal some of the blood. Our interpreter, Wu, took the heart as his
perquisite, carefully extracted the blood, and dried it in a basin. The
liver also seemed to be an especial desideratum, and in fact every part of
the viscera was saved. Because the antlers were hard they were not
considered of especial value, but had they been in the velvet we should
have had to guard them closely; then they would have been worth about one
hundred dollars (Mexican).

We expected from our easy hunt of the morning that it would not be
dif