Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/83

Rh miraculous medical root, Jensheng, which is paid its weight in gold. Sometimes the enterprising roamers succeed in trapping a few beautiful, almost black sables, martens, or even beavers, which have still their settlements in the rocky folds of the mountains. In such hard work, in perpetual danger from the savage criminals who escape from hard labour in Saghalien, or the tiger, lord of the wilderness, passes the life of the Chinese or the Korean.

The summer and half of the autumn gone, the yellow guests begin the return home. Their paths are as well known as the course of the migratory swans and storks who flit before the winter comes. And all the roads trodden by the yellow travellers, who are burdened with their booty, are infested by Russians. The migrants are usually clothed in white, the Korean colour, which helps to conceal them in their surroundings of snow. The Russians go in for "the daring industry" or the "white swan hunt" armed with rifles. A bullet finds the traveller in his disguise. The robber escapes unpunished, leaving the dead body of his victim a prey to wild beasts. Nor does the thought disturb him that on the far-off Eastern coast there is a family awaiting the return of a husband or father, on whose courageous searches for gold or Jensheng in the mysterious and dangerous wilderness of the mainland depend their life and existence.

A great number of men in the Far East enriched themselves in this way. At present the "white swan