Some Old
Editions Of Olaus Magnus Have Curious Cuts Of Laplanders And Others Riding
On Reindeer, But I Find Nothing In The Text Appropriate.
We hear from
travellers of the Lapland deer being occasionally mounted, but only it
would seem in sport, not as a practice.
(Erdmann, 189, 191; D'Ohsson,
I. 103; D'Avezac, 534 seqq.; J. As. ser. II. tom. xi.; ser. IV. tom.
xvii. 107; N. et E. XIII. i. 274-276; Witsen, II. 670, 671, 680;
Erman, II. 321, 374, 429, 449 seqq., and original German, II. 347 seqq.;
Notes on Russia, Hac. Soc. II. 224; J. A. S. B. XXIX. 379.)
The numerous lakes and marshes swarming with water-fowl are very
characteristic of the country between Yakutsk and the Kolyma. It is
evident that Marco had his information from an eye-witness, though the
whole picture is compressed. Wrangell, speaking of Nijni Kolyma, says: "It
is at the moulting season that the great bird-hunts take place. The
sportsmen surround the nests, and slip their dogs, which drive the birds
to the water, on which they are easily knocked over with a gun or arrow,
or even with a stick.... This chase is divided into several periods. They
begin with the ducks, which moult first; then come the geese; then the
swans.... In each case the people take care to choose the time when the
birds have lost their feathers." The whole calendar with the Yakuts and
Russian settlers on the Kolyma is a succession of fishing and hunting
seasons which the same author details. (I. 149, 150; 119-121.)
NOTE 3. - What little is said of the Barguerlac points to some bird of
the genus Pterocles, or Sand Grouse (to which belong the so-called Rock
Pigeons of India), or to the allied Tetrao paradoxus of Pallas, now
known as Syrrhaptes Pallasii. Indeed, we find in Zenker's Dictionary
that Boghurtlak (or Baghirtlak, as it is in Pavet de Courteille's) in
Oriental Turkish is the Kata, i.e. I presume, the Pterocles alchata of
Linnaeus, or Large Pin-tailed Sand Grouse. Mr. Gould, to whom I referred
the point, is clear that the Syrrhaptes is Marco's bird, and I believe
there can be no question of it.
[Passing through Ch'ang-k'ou, Mr. Rockhill found the people praying for
rain. "The people told me," he says, in his Journey (p. 9), "that they
knew long ago the year would be disastrous, for the sand grouse had been
more numerous of late than for years, and the saying goes Sha-ch'i kuo,
mai lao-po, 'when the sand grouse fly by, wives will be for sale.'" - H.
C.]
The chief difficulty in identification with the Syrrhaptes or any known
bird, would be "the feet like a parrot's." The feet of the Syrrhaptes are
not indeed like a parrot's, though its awkward, slow, and waddling gait on
the ground, may have suggested the comparison; and though it has very odd
and anomalous feet, a circumstance which the Chinese indicate in another
way by calling the bird (according to Hue) Lung Kio, or "Dragon-foot."
[Mr. Rockhill (Journey) writes in a note (p. 9): "I, for my part, never
heard any other name than sha-ch'i, 'sand-fowl,' given them.
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