Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 42 (Color Image)

0042	Among the Celestials : vol.1

20 AMONG THE CELESTIALS. [CHAP. I.

would attack even us pretty constantly, but it

was chiefly to the poor animals that they

directed their attention, and the wretched mules

were often covered with blood and .driven wild

by their attacks. Such were the conditions of

travel in the deep recesses of the Manchurian

forests.

At night we would put up in the sable-

hunters' huts, met with every twelve or fifteen

miles, each the head-quarters of a party of

hunters who trap sables and also seek the

ginseng root, a plant upon which the Chinese

set great store for medicinal purposes. Such

huts were suitable enough for the small parties

who ordinarily inhabited them, but when our

large party came in addition they were crammed

to bursting. Yet we had to sleep in them, for

to sleep outside amongst the swarms of mos-

quitoes and in the damp of the forest was an

impossibility. We therefore packed ourselves

into the huts, and were sometimes so tightly

squeezed in the row on the kang, that we had

to lie. heads and tails with the Chinamen, to fit

ourselves in at all. We had also to keep a

fire burning to raise smoke for the purpose of

driving off the mosquitoes ; so the heat on a

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