SPORT AND SCIENCE ON THE SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER [Illustration: THE AUTHOR. _Frontispiece._ ] SPORT AND SCIENCE ON THE SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER By ARTHUR DE CARLE SOWERBY, F.Z.S., F.R.G.S. Joint Author with Robert S. Clark of “Through Shên-Kan,” and Author of “Fur and Feather in North China” and “A Sportsman’s Miscellany” “Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so: ‘Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’” KIPLING. LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE, LTD. 3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1918 To MAJOR ROBERT STERLING CLARK, In memory of many happy days’ hunting on the Sino-Mongolian Frontier. Introduction Ever since the Original Hundred Families wandered eastward from Central Asia into the land now known as China, and settled in the broad and fertile valley of the Wei River in the present province of Shensi, forming the nucleus of the Flowery Kingdom, its people have been harassed continually by the ravaging hordes of Tartary. The frontiers between the two races, one peaceful and addicted to the practice of the Arts, the other warlike, and caring only for plunder, rapine and conquest, have always been marked by scenes of bloody conflicts, ruthless raids and brutal massacres; yet, strange though it may seem, it has been the peaceful nation which has won in the end, and continually the Sino-Mongolian boundary has been pushed further to the north. The Chinese have repeatedly been conquered by the Tartars, and subjected to a rule of tyranny and oppression; but it has always ended in the same way—either the absorption or the ejection of the Tartar conquerors, and a further advance of the Chinese upon the acknowledged territories of these predatory Nomads. From the Wei valley, occupied twenty centuries before the Christian era, the Chinese, themselves an invading race, driving out or exterminating the aborigines, spread steadily eastward and northward, till, in the reign of the illustrious Shih Huang-ti, the boundaries of the Empire were marked by the Great Wall. This for many centuries divided the actual territories of the Chinese from those of the Mongols, in spite of further invasions and conquests on the part of the latter; that is to say, the dwellers on the south side of the Wall remained Chinese and those on the north Mongol, regardless of the nationality of the ruling Emperor.