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A short time after we had made our camp near the Terelche River a messenger arrived from Urga with a huge package of mail. I explained the pictures to the hunter's wife in my best Chinese while Yvette "stood by" with her camera and watched results. Although the woman had visited Urga several times she had never seen a photograph or a magazine and for ten minutes there was no reaction.
In those days New York seemed to be on another planet and very, very far away. Happiness and a great peace was ours, such as those who dwell in cities can never know. In the midst of our second hunt the Mongols suddenly announced that they must return to the Terelche Valley. We did not want to go, but Tserin Dorchy was obdurate.
It was the first week in September when we returned to the base camp, our ponies heavily loaded with skins and antlers. The Chinese taxidermists under my direction had made a splendid collection of small mammals, and we had pretty thoroughly exhausted the resources of the forests in the Terelche region.
We rode along the Terelche River for three miles, sometimes splashing through the soggy edges of a marsh, and again halfway up a hillside where the ground was firm and hard; then, turning west on a mountain slope, we came to a low plateau which rolled away in undulating sweeps of bush-land between the edges of the dark pine woods.
No one wished to break camp in the icy deluge but there were three marshes between us and the Terelche River which were bad enough in dry weather. A few hours of rain would make them impassable, perhaps for weeks. My wife and I look back upon that day and the next as one of our few, real hardships.
They prefer to take a quiet walk, carrying their pet bird in a cage for an airing; to play a game of cards; or, if they must travel, to loll back in a sedan chair, with the curtains drawn and every breath of air excluded. The Terelche Valley meet was held on a flat strip of ground just below our camp.
It was discouraging, to say the least. We camped in the gathering darkness on a forty-five-degree slope in mud twelve inches deep. Next day we gathered up our scattered belongings, repaired the cart, and reached the river. I had a letter from Duke Loobitsan Yangsen to a famous old hunter, Tserin Dorchy by name, who lives in the Terelche region.
We entered them just north of Urga where the Siberian life zone touches the plains of the central Asian region and the beginnings of a new fauna are sharply delineated by the limit of the trees. We had learned that the Terelche River would offer a fruitful collecting ground. It was only forty miles from Urga and the first day's trip was a delight.
Our camp that night was at the base of a mountain called the Da Wat which shut us off from the Terelche River. On the second morning, instead of golden sunshine, we awoke to a cloud-hung sky and floods of rain. It was one of those days when everything goes wrong; when with all your heart you wish to swear but instead you must smile and smile and keep on smiling.
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