when we unexpectedly ran across the explanation of it in the little village on its shore, where we happened to be stopping.
It came in the course of a legend which the old Manchu, in whose house we were lodging, related to us, as he was handling and examining our arms. As the captain translated it to me, the old man's story ran about as follows:
"It was long, long ago—so long that even my grandfather did not remember it—that a terrible famine raged in China. Thousands upon thousands of people died in towns and villages, and it was only here between the Chor and the Tolo that Death did not levy his inexorable toll. This was because of our lake. In the spring and autumn immense flocks of ducks, geese, swans and other migrating birds came here to feed. They arrived in the spring from the south and the southwest, in the autumn down the valley of the Nonni and southeastward against the current of the Sungari; and they always stopped on our lake for a long period of rest and feeding, for then fish and nutritious water-plants were plentiful.
"In those days Buddha was reverently worshipped in our countryside. As you know, the Buddhist faith does not allow the use of the flesh of birds and fish. During the famine years a Chinese merchant from the south arrived here and, seeing the quantity of birds and fish and scoffing at the precepts of our faith, persuaded the people to make use of these ample supplies of food to protect them from the scourge of hunger. Following his advice, the people made a great net, larger than any ever seen on the Sungari, and also set many cunning traps for the birds. With the fish and game they thus took, our forefathers sustained themselves through the years of hunger and the lake region really did not suffer. But, when the
