Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/229

Rh quietly away, frequently stopping to look at the hunter. Like other antelope it is extremely tenacious of life and will run a long way although wounded.

They are not difficult to shoot, for besides showing no fear they haunt rocky defiles in the mountains, where they may be easily stalked. I have fired as many as one to two hundred shots at them in the course of the day, my bag of course varying a good deal with my luck in the long shots.

The orongo is held sacred by Mongols and Tangutans, and lamas will not touch the meat, which by the way is excellent, particularly in autumn when the animal is fat. The blood is said to possess medicinal virtues, and the horns are used in charlatanism: Mongols tell fortunes and predict future events by the rings on these, and they also serve to mark out the burial places, or more commonly the circles within which the bodies of deceased lamas are exposed: these horns are carried away in large numbers by pilgrims returning from Tibet, and are sold at high prices. Mongols tell you that a whip-handle made from one will in the hands of the rider prevent his steed from tiring.

Another prevalent superstition is, that the orongo has only one horn growing vertically from the centre of the head. In Kan-su and Koko-nor we were told that unicorns were rare, one or two in a thousand;