and in fifteen minutes I returned to the
inn for breakfast. Harry appeared shortly after with only a mallard
duck, for he had guessed wrong as to the direction of the flight,
and was entirely out of the shooting.

When the carts had started at eight o'clock Harry and I rode down
the shore of the lake to the south, with Chen to hold our horses.
The mud flats were dotted with hundreds of ruddy sheldrakes, their
beautiful bodies glowing red and gold in the sunlight. A hundred
yards from shore half a dozen swans drifted about like floating snow
banks, and ducks and geese by thousands rose or settled in the lake.
We saw a flock of mallards alight in the short marsh grass and when
I fired at least five hundred greenheads, yellow-nibs, and pintails
rose in a brown cloud.

Crouched behind the salt mounds, we had splendid shooting and then
rode on to join the carts, our ponies loaded with ducks and geese.
The road swung about to the north, and we saw geese in tens of
thousands coming into the lake across the mountain passes from their
summer breeding grounds in Mongolia and far Siberia. Regiment after
regiment swept past, circled away to the west, and dropped into the
water as though at the command of a field marshal.

Although we were following the main road to Kwei-hua-cheng, a city
of considerable importance not far from the mountains which
contained the sheep, we had no intention of going there. Neither did
we wish to pass through any place where there might be soldiers, so
on the last day's march we left the highway and followed an
unimportant trail to the tiny village of Wu-shi-tu, which nestles
against the mountain's base. Here we made our camp in a Chinese
house and obtained two Mongol hunters. We had hoped to live in
tents, but there was not a stick of wood for fuel. The natives burn
either coal or grass and twigs, but these would not keep us warm in
an open camp.

About the village rose a chaotic mass of saw-toothed mountains cut,
to the east, by a stupendous gorge. We stood silent with awe, when
we first climbed a winding, white trail to the summit of the
mountain and gazed into the abysmal depths. My eye followed an eagle
which floated across the chasm to its perch on a projecting crag;
thence, down the sheer face of the cliff a thousand feet to the
stream which has carved this colossal canyon from the living rock.
Like a shining silver tracing it twisted and turned, foaming over
rocks and running in smooth, gr