Note 11 — Chapter LI · LAKE KHANKA TO THE COAST.

In the early days of the Russian occupation tigers used to come into the town of Vladivostock, and my host had a horse eaten by them. His young boy once came home saying that he had seen “such a pretty calf,” but that he could not hold in his pony, such haste did it make to get away. Sixty-five tigers were said to have been killed in the district the year before my arrival, and Captain de Vries told me that on the road by which I travelled he was proceeding, early one morning, with a farmer and his dog, when the royal beast appeared on the road a few yards before them, at which they shouted, and the animal retired into the forest. They went forward, the dog preceding them, whereupon the tiger sprang out and seized the dog and bore it away. The farmer began to mourn his loss, but the captain said, “Why, you donkey! if the tiger had not taken the dog for his breakfast he might have taken you!” I heard these things, however, after my journey; and the only tangible reminders of tigers I saw were some of their skins, offered at Khabarofka and Vladivostock from £2, for that of a cub, to £5 for those of full size. Prejevalsky speaks of the tiger of the district as being equal to the royal tiger of Bengal, but, judging from the skins I saw, it is not so handsomely marked.