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176 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
sign of fear. The men had ridden them down after their
mothers had taken to flight. They were pretty, charm-
ing creatures, were these young wild asses, and I wanted
to try and rear them on porridge and take them along with
us. But Tokta Akhun, who was an experienced kulan
hunter, declared that they could not live five days without
their mothers’ milk. When he told me that, I ordered the
little things to be taken back to the locality where they
had been captured, so that their mothers might find them
again. But even of this Tokta Akhun would hear nothing.
He had learned by experience that the wild she-ass shuns
her offspring like the plague once it has been touched by
human hands. The only service I could therefore render
to these helpless creatures of the wilderness was to have
them killed, to save them from being cruelly torn to pieces
by the wolves which abounded in that region.
Our route still lay towards the west, down the valley to
the lake of Kum-kol. Immediately on the left of our route
was a continuous belt of gigantic sand-dunes. The open
valley was infested by a species of gadfly, which terribly
tormented our horses and the wild game by fastening them-
selves in their nostrils. When the kulans are attacked by
these enemies, they protect themselves by keeping their
noses close to the ground and grazing. The yaks, on the
other hand, quit the scene, taking refuge at sunrise up
amongst the sand-dunes, where there were no gadflies,
and towards evening they used to come down to the steppes
again. That afternoon, however, about four o’clock, there
sprang up a violent storm of intermingled hail and rain,
and the yaks understood that their tormentors would
then retire from the scene, so that they might safely go
down and begin to graze. The first to show itself was a
cow with her calf, which came sliding down the steep sandy
slope ; but as soon as she caught sight of us, she at once
turned back. Then appeared a herd of over thirty indivi-
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