. The story of Marco Polo . as being trained to hunt, is the cheetah, aspecies of leopard, which is carried to the hunting-field in a box, with its eyes covered by a loosed in the field, the cheetah will bound offin pursuit of any game which may be in sight, andseldom fails to bring it down. Hawking was afashionable diversion in Europe during Marcos time,as well as in Cathay. Kublai Khan had hawks ofvarious kinds taught to fly at feathered game; andhis trained eagles pursued larger game, such as wolvesand foxes. Here is a detailed account of the GreatKhans hunting expeditions: The E
. The story of Marco Polo . as being trained to hunt, is the cheetah, aspecies of leopard, which is carried to the hunting-field in a box, with its eyes covered by a loosed in the field, the cheetah will bound offin pursuit of any game which may be in sight, andseldom fails to bring it down. Hawking was afashionable diversion in Europe during Marcos time,as well as in Cathay. Kublai Khan had hawks ofvarious kinds taught to fly at feathered game; andhis trained eagles pursued larger game, such as wolvesand foxes. Here is a detailed account of the GreatKhans hunting expeditions: The Emperor hath two Barons who are own brothers,one called Baian, and the other Mingan; and these two arestyled Chinuchi (or Cunichi), which is as much as to say,The Keepers of the Mastiff Dogs. Each of thesebrothers hath ten thousand men under his orders, eachbody of ten thousand being dressed alike, the one in redand the other in blue; and whenever they accompany theKaan to the chase they wear this livery, in order to be ^V*. THE EAGLE AND ITS VICTIM. A MIGHTY HUNT. 141 recognised. Out of each body of ten thousand there aretwo thousand men who are each in charge of one or moregreat mastiffs, so that the whole number of these is verylarge. And when the Prince goes a-hunting, one of thoseBarons, with his ten thousand men and something likefive thousand dogs, goes towards the right, whilst theother goes towards the left with his party in like move along, all abreast of one another, so that thewhole line extends over a full days journey, and no animalcan escape them. Truly it is a glorious sight to see theworking of the dogs and the huntsmen on such an occasion !And as the Kaan rides a-fowling across the plains, you willsee these big hounds coming tearing up, one pack aftera bear, another pack after a stag, or some other beast, as itmay hap, and running the game down now on this side andnow on that, so that it is really a most delightful sport andspectacle. The Two B
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectvoyagesandtravels
