Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/72

60 shooting ducks, which paddled along the reeds and bushes along the shores of the mountain lakes, I also made two interesting observations. At various points I had to make my way through growths of hazel, and several times in these bushes heard sharp flappings of wings and the cries of flushing birds. Though the call seemed quite familiar to me, yet I could not name the bird. Finally, just as I was about to leave one of these hazel brakes, a dark brown bird with a long beak flushed within sight of me.

"Can it be a woodcock?" I asked myself incredulously, as I fired.

On picking up my bird, I found that it was, sure enough, an ordinary woodcock, the first one I had ever seen or heard of in Manchuria. Then I wandered around for some time in the brakes, but, as all the birds rose far away from me, I succeeded in bringing down only two more and had great trouble in finding these in the thick bushes and high grass.

The second observation was of quite a different character. The Kentei Alin Mountains are entirely wild, the best proof of which is the fact that the Chinese search here for ginseng, this mysterious medicinal plant growing in the virgin forest or in the wildest mountain glades, where the mighty prince of the jungle, the tiger, exercises his dominion and guard over the magic root. It was, therefore, naturally to be expected that few, if any, traces of human beings would be found. But traces were numerous—and what traces! We frequently found the spoors of iron-shod horses along the marshy banks of the mountain streams and on the sandy shoals, even, in one place, a fire that had just been left and was not quite burned out, near which, among cleanly gnawed bones and some unfinished hsioa mi-tzu gruel, I picked up a carbine