(What our flapping men sing)
His title of Honour, 'The Dread Mountain King.'"
Who can forget Pere Huc's inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their
caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, "walking with their
legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung
beneath their bellies quite to the ground. The monstrous beasts looked
exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy." Or that other, even
more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters
of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, in the moment of congelation, and thus
preserved throughout the winter, gigantic "flies in amber."
(N. et E. XIV. 478; J. As. IX. 199; J. A. S. B. IX. 566, XXIV. 235;
Shaw, p. 91; Ladak, p. 210; Geog. Magazine, April, 1874;
Hoffmeister's Travels, p. 441; Rubr. 288; Ael. de Nat. An. XV. 14;
J. A. S. B. I. 342; Mrs. Sinnett's Huc, pp. 228, 235.)
NOTE 4. - Ramusio adds that the hunters seek the animal at New Moon, at
which time the musk is secreted.
The description is good except as to the four tusks, for the musk deer
has canine teeth only in the upper jaw, slender and prominent as he
describes them.
