China in the early decades of the 20th century: Who was Major Pereira?

When researching the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration and the Fenwick-Owen hunting/collecting trip to China a name kept cropping up: Major Pereira.

Thus, when Dr Jack Smith, in his earlier life as a missionary, was one of a party to re-enter Shanxi (Shansi) in 1901 after the massacre of missionaries during the Boxer Rebellion, a member of that party was Major Pereira of the Grenadier Guards ‘in an unofficial capacity’. Smith left a photograph of that group, along with local Chinese officials, which Margaret Johnson used in her privately-published book on Smith. Pereira may have been ‘in an unofficial capacity’ but was in uniform while the missionaries look incongruous in Chinese dress of the time.

Major Pereira with the party of missionaries in 1901. A photograph from the collection of Dr Jack Smith (third right of those standing) used to illustrate the late Mrs Margaret Johnson's book on Smith)

There a several references to Pereira in Harold Frank Wallace’s account of George Fenwick-Owen’s journey—with Smith as interpreter and manager. He turns up during their retreat across the Gobi Desert: ‘Major Pereira arrived from Kashgar’. Earlier in the book, a reference is made to a ‘Major P——‘ who intervened to save the life of a Chinese official known by missionaries to have been innocent during the Boxer Rebellion but held for execution by the German contingent in Peking. Major P is clearly Pereira.

I was intrigued: who was the seemingly ubiquitous Major Pereira?

I soon found the answer. He was George Edward Pereira, born in London on 26 January 1865, the son of Edward Pereira and Margaret Ann, née Stoner. Edward (1817-1872) was born a Portuguese subject in Macau where the family had extensive interests. Edward’s father, António Vicente, a wealthy merchant had moved to London sometime in the middle 1800s.

George Pereira was educated at the Roman Catholic Oratory School, then in Birmingham, along with his brother, Edward. The latter, a priest and first-class cricketer. became headmaster of the school. After Sandhurst, George was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards in 1884. Five months later a hunting accident left him with a permanent limp. His initial ambitions—to see active service and explore thew world—were thus thwarted. However, in 1899 the by-then Captain Pereira was seconded to a new Chinese-manned infantry regiment (1st Chinese Regiment) formed in the recently-acquired treaty port of Weihaiwei. Action came in the form of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. He was slightly wounded during the fighting at Tientsin and he then took part in the relief of the legations in Peking as the British army fought as a member of the Eight-Nation Alliance. A despatch to London (London Gazette 6 November 1900) reads:

I signalled in to Lieutenant-Colonel Bower, who was in command of the forces left in the Settlement, to send me out two more companies of the Chinese Regiment with all the stretchers he could collect and on their arrival sent the stretchers forward carried by the men of the regiment under Major Pereira. Major Pereira made two trips out to the American position and brought back many of their wounded under very heavy fire, losing several men and being himself wounded.

 ‘In recognition of services during the recent operations in China’ Major Pereira was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). On 20 November 1900 he was gazetted as ‘Special Service Officer, graded as Deputy-Assistant Adjutant-General, on the Staff of the China Field Force.

Pereira’s appearance as Major P——in Wallace’s book reflects his presence in Peking and the established attitude of the German forces in the Alliance of execute first, ask questions later. It was during his tour during most of 1901 that Jack Smith encountered him as one of the party accompanying the missionaries returning to Shanxi in June-July 1901.

A great deal happened to Pereira between meeting Smith in 1901 and their meeting on the road across the Gobi in February 1911. In May 1902 he rejoined the Grenadier Guards for the final stage of the Boer War in South Africa. In 1903 he went to Korea, being appointed temporary military attaché there in 1904. Then it was on to a job as a military attaché to the Japanese |Army during its campaign in Manchuria in the war between Russia and Japan of 1904-05. There is an article on Wikipedia here on the rôle of foreign military attachés and observers in that war. For his part Pereira was appointed CMG in 1906. From Manchuria, in autumn 1905, he went as military attaché to the legation at Peking with the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

It was from Peking that Pereira explored all parts of China in a series of long journeys between 1906 and 1908. He visited units of the Chinese Army. M.J. Pollock, his biographer for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, wrote:

His tact and understanding and his conversational ability enabled him to make many personal friends among high officials. The knowledge he gained of Chinese people from the soldiers of his Weihaiwei regiment to the highest levels of officialdom was of great value for his later travels. He came back to Europe in 1909, but peacetime soldiering held no attractions and he resigned his commission in July of that year. 

It was then back to China for exploration and shooting, this time as a civilian. Between 1910 and 1912 he covered 11,000 miles—on foot. It was of course, on one of his long journeys in the west of the country, that he met Dr Smith again along with George Fenwick-Owen and Harold Frank Wallace.

The map from Pereira's paper on crossing the Ordos in 1910

Back in U.K. Pereira became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Reserve of Officers. This reserve was mobilised at the outbreak of war in 1914. From the staff of the 47th London Division, he took command of the 4th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, a territorial army unit, in June 1915. Leading them, he was slightly wounded at the Battle of Loos. By this time he was a Brevet Colonel, i.e. an unpaid promotion, achieved by merit, but for the rest of the war he was a temporary Brigadier-General commanding from January 1916 until November 1917 the 47th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division through some of the bloodiest battles on the Somme. Companionship of the Bath (CB) was awarded in January 1917.  Then, in 1918, he commanded 43rd Brigade of the 14th (Light) Division during the final advance that ended in the armistice. Pollock noted: ‘He always won the absolute confidence of his troops by his complete disregard for danger’.

George Edward Pereira in 1918
by Walter Stoneman
©National Portrait Gallery
NPG X169940

Pereira retired—again—in 1919 with the honorary rank of Brigadier-General (i.e. the highest rank achieved on a temporary basis). However, Pollock notes, he was part of an ill-advised British mission sent to Siberia to support the White Russians under Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Kolchak was based in Omsk—part of the world with which Pereira was very familiar—and members of the mission crossed Siberia to reach Omsk after landing at Vladivostok.

In 1920 Pereira was back in China to his travels intending if possible to reach Lhasa in Tibet. Only two Europeans, both French missionaries had previously made it to Lhasa from China—in 1846. His journeys through China from 1920 to 1923 were long, hard and dangerous in the era of brigands and war lords; his party came under fire once. An account of his travels, Peking to Lhasa, extracted from Pereira’s detailed diaries and maps, was written up by his friend, Sir Francis Younghusband. I will not go into any detail of these extensive travels but the map below I have adapted from that in in the book shows the ground he covered, mostly on foot, sometimes in the Chinese version of a sedan chair, sometimes by mule or cart and occasionally by rail or river boat. I will, however, point out he did indeed reach Lhasa.

I have coloured red the routes taken by Pereira on this three journeys in China in 1921-23

Pereira was a natural observer and commentator on the human scene and geography of China. Biologically, his travels were less interesting. However, he did spend four months on mountain treks around Muping in Sichuan. He was hoping to shoot a Giant Panda but, not surprisingly given the nature of their habitat, failed. He did shoot a Red Panda and that found its way to the Natural History Museum.

These are extracts from the book about his hunt for a Giant Panda (note the use of the word pandar in the early decades of the 20th Century by British and American authors):

Having established himself in the valley of the T’ung-ch’ang Ho, a fierce mountain torrent, Pereira set out on July 30 on a five days’ trip to try and get a giant pandar. He limited his transport to four coolies. His baggage consisted of the outer fly of his tent to serve as a tente d’abri, a waterproof sheet, a Gladstone bag, wash-basin, rifle, camera, water-bottle and some food. And he was accompanied by his cook and two or three hunters who, as well as the coolies, bore various weapons ranging from a Mauser rifle to flint-locks, and what resembled a cross between a carbine and a pistol flint-lock. He travelled south-west up the Tung-tzuchi valley between high hills. 

The next day he climbed the Ta-pan-au (8640 feet) to the N.N.E. in a vain search for pandar. Though not very steep, after the first mile the going was tedious. He had to force his way through bamboo scrub from 2 to 4 feet high. The hill-side was dense with trees whose branches were often too high to step over and too low to get under. Creepers would catch him round the leg. Branches which looked substantial would give way. Also the ground was very slippery. In such a country there was hardly a chance even of seeing a pandar. And for the small hunting dogs to drive one to him, even if they found one, could not be expected. A pandar might easily pass within 10 yards without being seen. Naturally, therefore, Pereira’s search was fruitless.

On August 6 he set off westward, and after a very stiff climb crossed the Weng-ting Ta Pass (10,170 feet), from which he had grand views down the valley he had been ascending. Then he had a long descent for over 4 miles, constantly crossing a dashing hill torrent. At the end of the march he put up with Father Liu-P’ei, a Chinese Catholic priest, in a charming mission house situated on the hill-side, 600 feet above the valley and with a court inside filled with beautiful flowers. Here Pereira was laid up for fifty-three days with a blistered foot, due to his walking in sandals. And his stay was not rendered any the pleasanter by the weather, for it rained nearly every day in September.

Things started to go wrong for Pereira. Infected blisters and frostbite from walking in the snow in sandals (his boots made passage through streams and on slippery rocks difficult) were the first signs that he was breaking down physically. He had to be carried down one mountain on the back of one of his coolies. The trek over high-altitude passes (14-17 thousand feet) on the way to Lhasa cannot have helped. He arrived in Lhasa completely exhausted with what is described as thrombosis in his left leg. After meeting the thirteenth Dalai Lama he headed south for India and the railway at Darjeeling. On reaching Calcutta he had to spend time in a nursing home for treatment to his leg. But then he was off on his travels again, reaching Yunnan from Burma. He visited tribal areas and then took passage on a steamer down the Yangtse to Shanghai.

After a couple of weeks spent in Hong Kong he travelled to Haiphong in Indo-China and then inland to Yunnan-Fu, now known as Kunming. From there and for this, his final, journey he had a companion, Dr H. Gordon Thompson, a medical missionary. Between Batang and Kantze (Garzê, Gānzī, Kandze) Pereira was taken ill, eating little and deteriorating. Thompson gave an account of this journey to the Royal Geographical Society. Here is his account of Pereira’s death from what Thompson diagnosed as a perforated gastric ulcer on 20 October 1923, aged 58:

At 12.5 I was with the muleteers accompanying the first lot of nine yaks when I was told that Pereira was on the ground. I turned back and found that he had had to get off his pony owing to a sudden attack of severe pain. We were only 3¾ miles from Kantse, so I gave orders for the caravan to go on and get across the river Yalung, while the Tibetan boy remained with us. The General was very collapsed, but after fifty minutes he seemed easier, and insisted on going on. With difficulty we got him on to a pony and made our way slowly down to the river. We crossed by the coracle ferry, and then, after fixing up his camp bed and lashing the tent poles on to the sides for carrying, he rested comfortably. The pain became less, and we tried to get passing Tibetans to act as bearers up to the town, only 1¾ miles away. It was of no use—not even our Washi yak-drivers, who had been with us from Batang, would help to carry a sick man. As time was getting on and it would soon be dark, I sent the Tibetan boy on ahead to find a house for us to stay, and then, as the General thought he could manage on the pony, we lifted him into the saddle and slowly made our way into the town. At 5.20 we arrived at our destination. His bed was soon ready, and in a few minutes we had him snug with hot-water bottles and every comfort that we could give him; but he was very weak. At a quarter to nine he asked for the light to be put out and he would try to sleep. After thanking me for all my trouble he dozed a little and wandered in his sleep, sometimes talking in Chinese, sometimes in English. At 1 a.m. I helped him to turn on to his side, and he talked to me quite rationally; but after a few minutes there was a sudden change, he became unconscious, and ten minutes later he passed away peacefully in my arms. So died a brave soldier, a remarkable traveller, and a devout Christian.

The Tibetans dispose of their dead either by throwing the body into the river or by putting it out to be eaten by vultures ; but the Chinese traders in Kantse had a small plot of ground which they used as a cemetery. The Chinese official offered me a site for a grave, and so I laid him to rest there, under the shadow of the Great Kantse Lamasery and within sight of the great snow-range forming the Ho chu lung divide. Sixteen Tibetans carried the coffin to the grave.

After Pereira’s death I decided to continue the journey as we had planned it…

As far as Thompson is concerned he did continue the journey along the borders of China. He was, however, captured by brigands and held for eight days until assisted to escape by a Chinese official.

Pereira’s body did not lie in Kantze for long; it was removed to lie in the consecrated ground of the Roman Catholic church and mission at Tatsienlu* (Kangding). According to the entry for the city in Wikipedia, the church was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, was rebuilt in the 1980s but being disused has been turned into a shopping centre and hotel. I have no information on what has happened to Pereira’s grave.

The entry in the overseas register of Pereira's death

In his will Pereira left £32,487, the equivalent of between £1.6m and £3m in today’s money. His executor was his brother, Major General Sir Cecil Edward Pereira (1869-1942), whose military career followed a more conventional course. George Pereira appeared to have no permanent base in Britain. His address, for probate, was given as ‘The Guards Club, Brook Street’^†.

Pereira’s original material lives on: some of his travels were published in the Geographical Journal; his diaries and photographs are held by the Royal Geographical Society; the Chinese weaponry he collected is in the Horniman Museum; proper versions of the maps he made were prepared by the War Office (now in the British Library) including those made after he retired from the army for the second time. He made numerous visits to Chinese army units and there seems little doubt that he continued to supply intelligence material to London up to the time of his death.

His other interest was horse racing. Indeed he was intending to return to Britain in time for the 1924 Derby.

M.J. Pollock summed up George Pereira as follows:

Pereira was 5 feet 9 inches tall, lame, and not physically strong. He had, however, great energy, a genius for leadership, and an absolute determination to carry out his plans combined with an indifference to danger, discomfort, and fatigue. He was ready to talk about his journeys but in a purely impersonal manner. Although he had a very proper sense of self-respect, and was not a man to be trifled with, he had great charm and was modest with an innate courtesy and a dry sense of humour. 'It is lucky therefore that the brigands are so utterly ignorant of brigandage as a fine art'. His experiences of brigands he described as 'a regular Gilbert and Sullivan opera'. He spoke Mandarin Chinese and had some knowledge of dialects which made him independent of interpreters for all but Tibetan conversations. He was deeply religious and a devout Catholic, but with a broad sympathy for people of all kinds. Army life coupled with a restless spirit made him disinclined to a settled life and he never married though he remained devoted to his family. 

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This is the second British military attaché to Peking I have written about since starting this blog, the other being Valentine Burkhardt (1884-1967). Both were China specialists; both were interested also in natural history.

It also happens that I have been to both Yunnan and Sichuan so the sort of country described by Pereira is very familiar. However, the change in the last couple of decades has been so rapid that it is difficult to conceive when travelling along a modern highway with its massive engineering work, or ascending a mountain in a ski-lift, of the conditions in the towns and villages, of the state of virtual civil war or of the difficulties of getting from A to B, that prevailed less than a century ago, indeed only twenty years before I was born.

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†The Guards’ Club was in Pall Mall not Brook Street.

*Previously referred to in this blog as the site of collection of the type specimen of the Chinese Mountain Cat, Felis bieti.

Johnson M. 2011. The life and travels of Dr JAC Smith 1873-1929. Published privately by the author.

Pereira G. 1911. A journey across the Ordos. Geographical Journal 37, 260-264.

Pollock MJ. 2004. Pereira, George Edward (1865-1923). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35475

Thompson, H.G. 1926. From Yunnan-Fu to Peking along the Tibetan and Mongolian borders, including the last journey of Brig.-Gen. George E. Pereira. Geographical Journal 67, 2-23.

Wallace HF, 1913. The Big Game of Central and Western China. Being an Account of a Journey from Shanghai to London Overland Across the Gobi Desert. London: John Murray

Younghusband F. 1925. Peking to Lhasa. The narrative of journeys in the Chinese Empire made by the late Brigadier-General George Pereira, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., compiled by Sir Francis Younghusband, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E., from notes and diaries supplied by Major-General Sir Cecil Pereira, K.C.B., C.M.G. London: Constable.

The Golden Takin: who, what and when

In previous posts I have described collecting and game shooting trips into the mountains of central China from which specimens were sent to the Natural History Museum in London in the years before the First World War. As a result of the first Oldfield Thomas at the Museum named as a new species a Takin, now known as the Golden Takin. I will return to the question of whether it is a ‘good’ species later. The first specimens, two females and a male, to reach London were from the later phases of the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration, almost immediately followed by George Fenwick-Owen’s travels with his companions over much of the same ground.

Golden Takin photographed in Shanghai Zoo by
J Patrick Fischer in 2011
(shown on Wikipedia)

In China

The leader of the Exploration, Malcolm Playfair Anderson, had an article published posthumously in which he described how he and his party, Frank Kingdon Ward and Dr Jack Smith, had obtained the skins and skulls in January 1910. They were in the Qinling Mountains, west-south-west of Xi’An when they heard reports of a strange animal called a ‘pan-yang’. Being busy with collecting small mammals and birds they hired a local hunter to shoot specimens. This the hunter did and sent a messenger with the news that two females were ready to be skinned. The next day Anderson, Ward and Smith along with porters set off on the steep, ice-bound climb. A village blacksmith had made some heavy iron crampons and these they needed. Ward could not keep up and eventually after a very cold night made his way back down. Anderson and Smith continued. By this time they had climbed from the village at 3,000 feet to above the tree-line at 10,000 feet. They stayed the night with sawyers who gave them food since Ward had been carrying all the provisions. The next day they reached the hunter and the animals. Anderson had no idea what the animals were, with Smith guessing a muskox. The cadavers were in thick ‘bamboo-grass’ on a steep slope and being frozen took a long time to skin. The party then retreated leaving the hunter to bring down the skins and skulls the following day. The descent was difficult in the freezing cold and high wind but a full moon enabled them to continue:

To right and left rose snowy peaks, at our feet was a precipice, and far below us lay vast cañons filled with dark forest. By daylight it would not have appeared an unusual mountain scene, but in this enchanted light it was indescribably majestic. We paused awhile, forgetting that we were tired, shivering, and famished. 

They reached the inn in the village at midnight.

Anderson, Ward and Smith also, said Anderson, attempted to hunt for specimens themselves with the assistance of local hunters. They slept in a cave, more an overhanging rock, which is clearly the cave which Fenwick-Owen, Wallace and Smith occupied in considerable discomfort on their trip in 1911. The party did see takins and got within range for Anderson to have a number of shots shots. However, he missed. Then the hunter appeared to announce he had shot a male just below their ‘cave’. That was the third specimen to reach London.

From the dates in the accounts it would seem that Anderson reversed the order of the two occasions for his magazine article. He states that the party set off to shoot a Takin themselves on 8 January. In his description of the type specimen, one of the females, Thomas  gives the date it was shot as 15 January 1910. To add to the confusion, Wallace in describing the other ‘sportsmen’ who had shot takins in China notes that Smith, ‘our companion’, killed one in Shensi in 1910. So were takins, in addition to those sent to Thomas in London, collected during the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration?

The 'cave' in the Qinling Mountains used by both expeditions
(From Wallace's book)

In London

Oldfield Thomas was obviously delighted with the skins and skulls received from Anderson.

Of the majority of the Shen-si specimens there is little new to record, as Mr. Anderson had obtained the same species on his previous visit to the more northern part of the province. But in any case their interest is dwarfed by the discovery on Tai-pei-san of a magnificent species of Takin, quite different from the known W. Chinese species Budorcas tibetanus, and both in interest and beauty one of the most striking mammals that it has ever been my good fortune to describe. 

He first described it to the Zoological Society of London which was published as an abstract on 2 May 1911. Then in a fuller paper he described the specimens more fully. The type specimen for his new species, Budorcas bedfordi,  was one of the females. He went on:

The discovery of this splendid animal, whose golden-buffy colour renders it by far the most beautiful of its genus, is of the highest interest, and it is with great pleasure that I name the species in honour of the Society's President, during whose exploration of Eastern Asia it has been obtained. Mr. Anderson himself seems to have thought the occurrence of Takin on Tai-pei-san of special interest, and believed that they would probably prove to be new. He says: "The herds on Tai-pei-san are isolated by some hundreds of miles from the nearest others we could hear of, and as I could not learn that any other foreigner has hunted them on Tai-pei, I believe the chance for a new species is good.”

As a matter of fact, however, specimens had previously been obtained and had passed into the possession of the American Museum of Natural History at NewYork. But these were quite young, and showed, as it was not unnatural that the young should show, more or less of the normal coloration of the group, with blackish muzzle and extremities, and therefore in recording them Dr. Allen saw no reason to suppose them different from B. tibetanus. The practically unicolor condition of B. bedfordi proves therefore to be a characteristic of the adult, a fact which, in view of the peculiar specialization of such a colour, is not at all surprising.

Wallace writing in 1913, stated that the New York specimens had been purchased from a local hunter.

Is the Golden Takin a separate species?

The Golden Takin since its description by Oldfield Thomas has been lumped or split according to the views, whims or philosophies of taxonomists over the past century. Thus all the forms of takin, from the Himalayas in the west to the Qinling Mountains of China in the west have been lumped into one species, Budorcas taxicolor. Alternatively, the subspecies, for example B. t. tibetana (from the mountains of Sichuan) and B. t. bedfordi have been regarded as full species, as Thomas maintained. Generally, the lumpers held sway, the differences between the geographical forms being in coloration. The Takin appears as one species, for example, in the 4th edition of Walker’s Mammals of the World from 1983 and in A Guide to the Mammals of China from 2008. Recently however, those adhering to the phylogenetic species concept (PSC) have all the forms split as four species, with B. bedfordi resurrected, for example, in Volume 2 of Handbook of the Mammals of the World. Readers may be aware that I regard those who adhere to the PSC and not the biological species concept as akin to the man searching for his keys under the street light even though he did not lose them there on the grounds that is the only place where he can see. So, yes, you can take it that I see no reason to regard the Golden Takin as a ‘good’ biological species.

I cannot help wondering if Oldfield Thomas may have just got carried away when he erected the golden-coloured takin as a full species. After all, what better way than to recognise a benefactor, whose funding had really pushed forward knowledge on the mammals of China, by naming a most spectacular animal after him?

Takin distribution from IUCN's Red Data List (here). The RED line shows the approximate site of collection of
specimens by the Duke of Bedford's Exploration in January 1910. The BLUE Line shows the approximate site of Tangjiahe in Sichuan where the videos and photographs were taken in November 2017

What is a Takin?

The Takin is undoubtedly a strange looking animal. For years it was thought to be closely related to the Muskox. However, it was eventually realised—and recently confirmed by analysis of the entire mitochondrial genome—that the Takin belongs to the sheep and goats tribe, the Caprini (or the subfamily Caprinae, if following that scheme of classification) sharing immediate common ancestry with the true goats (Capra) and blue ‘sheep’ (Pseudois).

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Takins are animals of the mountains, moving up and down steep forested slopes with ease. In the summer they are most active at dusk and dawn but in winter may feed all day. Similarly, they move to higher altitudes in summer but in winter can be found in the valleys. They are mostly browsers. I have written about our encounters with Takins at Tangjiahe National Reserve in Sichuan previously (link here). The Takin here is usually referred to, not surprisingly, as the Sichuan Takin, Budorcas taxicolor tibetana, or by PSC devotees as B. tibetana. That article has a link to one of my videos. Another, showing Takins at night as well as by day is below. Clearly, as you will see, fallen, ripe persimmons are irresistible.

I have heard but seen little written that Takins are the most dangerous wild animal in China in terms of loss of human life and limb. They will certainly charge at perceived danger. When we tried to see the Takins in the the park in Thimpu, Bhutan, where a number are kept, we could not. The park was closed because one of the males was so aggressive that it had been charging at visitors through the wire fence to the detriment of the fence.

Finally, some photographs by Tim Melling of the same animals I videoed in Sichuan in November 2017. They can also be seen on Flickr along with Tim’s other photographs.

Links to previous articles:

Oldfield Thomas here

Duke of Bedford’s Exploration here, here, and here

Fenwick-Owen’s Expedition here

Anderson MP. 1920. The discovery of the Chinese Takin. Natural History 20. 428-433.

Nowak RM, Paradiso JL. 1983. Walker’s Mammals of the World. 4th edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smith AT, Xie Y (editors). 2008. A Guide to the Mammals of China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Thomas O. 1911. The Duke of Bedford’s zoological exploration of eastern Asia.—XIV. On mammals from southern Shen-si, Central China. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1911, 687-695.

Wallace HF, 1913. The Big Game of Central and Western China. Being an Account of a Journey from Shanghai to London Overland Across the Gobi Desert. London: John Murray

Zhou M, Yu J, Li B, Ouyang B, Yang J. 2019. The complete mitochondrial genome of Budorcas taxicolor tibetana (Artiodactyla: Bovidae) and comparison with other Caprinae species: Insight into the phylogeny of the genus Budorcas. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules 121, 223-232.

To Shoot a Golden Takin. George Fenwick-Owen’s big-game and zoological collecting expedition across China, 1911-1912

In my article of 15 May 2019 I described Dr Jack Smith’s part in an expedition led and paid for by George Fenwick-Owen in China in 1911-12. Smith was hired as interpreter but, as might be expected, his medical and diplomatic skills were called upon as well. The trip was written up and illustrated by Harold Frank Wallace (1881-1962) and it is not surprising that Wallace is sometimes referred to as its instigator and leader; he was not, he makes it clear that he had been asked by Fenwick-Owen to participate.

Fenwick-Owen and Wallace left Liverpool on 19 May 1911 on board Canadian Pacific’s Empress of Ireland. They then travelled across Canada and then by sea to Shanghai. They arrived back in England in April 1912.

The actual hunting in the Qinling and Min (Minshan) mountains west of Xi’an (with the relevant parts of the various corpses prepared for the Natural History Museum in London) occupied a relatively small part of the journey as did Smith’s collection of small mammals also destined for the museum, although gazelles and birds were shot for food during the long journey to Russia. As the revolution in China that overthrew the Qing Dynasty got underway the party decided it unsafe to head back to Shanghai from Xi’An via Sichuan and the Yangtse valley as planned. Instead they headed across the Gobi Desert for the Russian border—a distance of approximately 2,400 km.

The route across China can be followed on a modern map. Sianfu is Xi'an

The London press had a number of reviews of Wallace’s book and I can no better than to quote here the article in the Illustrated London News (17 May 1913) by Professor John McKendrick FRS (1841-1926), Professor of Physiology in the University of Glasgow from 1876 until 1906:

Big-Game in China. Mr. Harold Frank Wallace has given a rather mislead­ing title to his account of a sporting journey from Shanghai to Omsk across the Gobi Desert. To call it. as he does, “The Big Game of Central and Western China“ (John Murray) is to suggest that the volume deals only' with natural history and sport, while, in point of fact, the first seventy pages deal with travel, and, after fifteen pages of sport, there arc perhaps forty dealing with other matters. Happily Mr. Wallace tells the travel story well; he was in a part of the world known to few Europeans, save missionaries, who appear to be labouring in a rather stony vineyard. The takin (Budorcos bedfordi) was the special object of the expedition : it is a near relative to the musk ox, and is found in Shensi; others of its family being found elsewhere. It is known as the rock-goat in Shensi, and as the wild ox in Kansu. Other big game secured by the author and Mr. George Fenwick-Owen, whose guest he was, include roe-deer (Capreolus bedfordi), burhel (precipice sheep), white-maned serow, “a strange beast with enormous ears like those of a roan antelope...and a long mane"; bear, and wapiti. 

The country covered proved to be interesting, and the primitive people were friendly, although the revolu­tionary movement was about to affect several districts through which the author and his friend passed. 

Dr. J. A. C. Smith, of Shanghai, who accompanied the party, was asked by the people if, when he reached home, he brought back to life the birds he was stuffing! Cer­tain pheasants, known as machi, are trapped and reared to provide a dozen tail feathers per annum for hats; but, as a rule, the people show little inclination to preserve, and are quite content to destroy — the fate of the forests being accountable for much of the poverty that pre­vails in a country where peaches and eggs may be bought at the modest rate of sixteen for a penny! The revolution in China broke up the programme and brought Mr. Wallace and his friend home by way of Tibet and Asiatic Russia; but Mr. Fen­wick-Owen's collection of small mammals, prepared by Dr. Smith. and consisting of sixty-eight specimens, includes seven new species, and is described by the British Museum authorities as "a most valuable supplement to the series obtained by Mr. Anderson during the Duke of Bedford’s exploration of Eastern Asia.” Certainly the story of the expedition provides good reading for, quite apart from the author’s distinct gift, it deals with an unknown country, and animals about which we have had little precise information hitherto. Photographs, drawings, maps, and appendices add to the value of the book. The cost of a six-months’ trip, starting from Shanghai, for two sportsmen, a white interpreter, and boys, is set down at £816. 

Travel was by boat (up the Yangtse), train and, uncomfortably, by mule- or horse-drawn cart. Wallace’s book contains many observations on rural and urban China. Anybody who visited the old Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong and saw the plaster models depicting methods of torture and execution will not be surprised at what the travellers saw as everyday occurrences or of the atrocities inflicted on the Manchus as any semblance of structure broke down at the start of the revolution. One governor was killed by being fed feet-first into a straw chopping machine. Two days before their arrival in Liangchow (now Wuwei) ‘three men—a Szechuanese and two natives—went to a big farm 40 li from the city and told the proprietor that they were revolutionaries. They said that a large body of troops was arriving on the following day who were to encamp near his farm, but that, if he would provide them with three horses and guns, they would see that he suffered no further loss. The farmer provided them with the horses and guns, but would not allow them to leave. Next day, no sign of a revolutionary army! Down came the farmer and his friends on the three impostors and marched them off to the official at Liangchow, who was a man of prompt action. Consequently, on our arrival, to parody Charles Kingsley, "three corpses lay out in the muddy streets”…

Wallace continued: ‘A favourite pastime of the district was the chopping down of telegraph poles, these being a convenient form of fuel. Ten miles of these useful articles having been demolished outside the city, telegrams were forwarded over this distance in a more or less unreadable condition by mounted messengers. Two or three men had been executed at Kanchow [Zhangye], this being the only effective deterrent. We saw one head nailed up in a wooden cage outside the walls’.

Wallace’s theme for the book was its intention to guide fellow hunters on the pro and cons of China as a place to shoot big game and of how to go about it in terms of the sort of guide to employ (i.e. Smith) and the costs involved. However, it is clear that all three participants were very keen naturalists and antiquarians as well as people watchers. Wallace’s approach took me back to early 1959 and ‘O’ level English Language. We had to précis a passage and either in the ‘mock’ or the real examination the passage were were given argued that natural history as pursued by observation and collection is really a substitute for the hunting that once perforce occupied our ancestors. Indeed as madly keen birders walk and stalk with binoculars, telescopes and cameras, the words ‘prey’ and ‘quarry’ spring instantly to mind.

The finances of the trip make interesting reading. Wallace included them as a guide to anybody wishing to undertake a hunting trip to the mountains of central and north China. The total expenditure was £816 of which £360 was paid to Smith (£60 per month for six months). The average pay of a medical practitioner in Britain in 1911 was £272 so I think it can be said that Smith did alright In today’s money, calculated from the Retail Price Index, Smith received £32,000 for his six months. However, because pay has risen to a greater extent than prices, a higher estimate is £135,000.

Crossing the Gobi Desert

Harold Frank Wallace

Wallace was born in Yorkshire on 21 March 1881, the son of a physician. At the 1891 Census the family was living in Inverness-shire; he described himself as Scottish and clearly spent a great deal of time stalking Red Deer. In 1901 the family was in Chelsea. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a barrister by profession but it seems unlikely he spent much time at the bar. His life seems to have been devoted to hunting (a two-year trip round the world before the expedition to China with Fenwick-Owen), writing about hunting and travel, and painting Scottish highland scenes containing deer. His work appears regularly on the art market. After his return from China he married Elizabeth Anne Macpherson on 11 July, an occasion described at very great length by the Staffordshire Advertiser. He served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the First World War. There is a photograph of him from 1917 or 1918 (he was commissioned sub-lieutenant in April 1917, having served as an Able Seaman and Petty Officer) in the Imperial War Museum.

His wife inherited Little Wyrley Hall at Pelsall in Staffordshire and they lived there from 1927 until his death. He served as a local magistrate from 1934. The house, over 400 years old, has appeared on television and in magazines not because of its elegance and antiquity but because of its surroundings. It is in the middle of a coalfield and the resultant workings. Country Life reported on a visit to the Wallaces in 1952: ‘The prospect westwards from the front door is terminated in the middle distance by a monumental slag-heap. Colliery workings have encroached to within a few hundred feet of the east side of the house’.

He acquired a dubious honour but one to be dined-out on. On 25 April 1938, the Aberdeen Press and Journal reported under the headline, ‘Hitler Decorates Three Britons’:

Herr Hitler has decorated three Britons with the order of the German Eagle of the Third Class in connection with the recent hunting exhibition in Berlin. They are…and Mr Harold Frank Wallace, author, artist and big game hunter.

Wallace was the Deer Controller Officer for Scotland during the Second World War.

Harold Frank Wallace died on 16 September 1962 at Wyrley Hall. Reporting his death, the Birmingham Post of 18 September recalled his visit to Berlin in 1937: ‘He recalled lunching…with Goering whose elaborate hunting costume reminded him of a little boy “playing at Robin Hood”. The article ends:

A tithe barn at his home was converted to hold a collection of nearly 200 trophy heads. There could be found one of his rarest specimens, a takin, which is a large mountain animal from Tibet, ibex, wapiti and boar. His son, Mr Hamish Wallace, said last night: ‘The trophies have become a part of Wyrley and there is no question of removing them.’ Mr Wallace said that in the past few years, who had shot many hundreds of animals, was very concerned with the preservation of wildlife, particularly in Africa. ‘He told me “I would not be interested in shotting now that so many herds have dwindled”.’

Does anybody know what happened to the Takin and other material collected in China? (Fenwick-Owen’s went to the Natural History Museum.) Are they still at Wyrley Hall?

Finally, who was George Fenwick-Owen?

Wallace in his book helpfully reproduced a whole paper by Oldfield Thomas on the mammals collected. As a result we know that Fenwick-Owen had previously donated specimens to the natural history museum from ‘French Gambia’, presumably Senegal. Thomas named a mole discovered in the montane forests by the expedition for Fenwick-Owen—Scapanulus oweni, the Gansu Mole. This mole is still the only member of its genus; it occurs only in Central China.

I suspect this is a photograph
of Fenwick-Owen since he shot
the Serow

Fenwick-Owen appears in The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals under ‘Owen’. The Golden Takin collected is mentioned as is the type specimen of a peony and some antiquities. However, no dates of birth and death had been found. As a result of my digging around the usual sources, I can now add those dates.

George Fenwick-Owen was born on 28 December 1882. He was the son of Francis Fenwick, a banker, and Mary Matilda Owen. A note on a genealogy reads ‘Name “assumed by his mother’s royal warrant”. I have no idea what they statement means but it is possible that his name was changed to the double-barrelled Fenwick-Owen by royal licence, a common method at the time. Records show that he was schooled at Eton, leaving in 1902, and then matriculating at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1903.

When he set off for his Chinese expedition in 1911 he was 28. I have found no record of any other collecting activities after his return in 1913. In March 1914 he was married to Marion Bettina Maud Rawnsley*. The honeymoon was in Japan.

There is an interesting connexion with the world of natural history on his wife’s side. The wedding reception was held at 45 Pont Street, London, ‘lent’, the report in The Times states, ‘by Mr & Mrs F du Cane Godman’. The bride’s cousin, Eva Godman, was a bridesmaid. Frederick du Cane Godman FRS (1834-1919) was ornithological aristocracy, a founder of the British Ornithologists’ Union and still commemorated by the Godman-Salvin medal. Whether George Fenwick-Owen had any introduction to the upper reaches of natural history through the Godman connexion, to Oldfield Thomas, for example, before his marriage, i.e. at the time of his expedition to China, I do not know but it does seem possible.

On 1 October 1914, war having been declared on 28 July, he was commissioned as a subaltern in the Norfolk Yeomanry. Promotion to 1st Lieutenant followed in May 1915 and to Captain in December 1915. He was awarded the Military Cross when attached to the 12th Battalion Norfolk Regiment in Palestine. He was wounded twice, in Egypt and in the Gallipoli Campaign. The citation for his M.C. reads:

Capt. George Fenwick-Owen, Yeo. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during an engagement. He contributed largely by his promptness and sound judgement to the success of the operation. His initiative, courage, and good leadership undoubtedly saved many casualties among his men.

By 1924, the Fenwick-Owens were living in Knightsbridge, London but The Times of 26 February 1929 announced, ‘Captain and Mrs Fenwick-Owen have taken [i.e. are renting] Rempstone Hall, Corfe Castle Dorset, which will be their address in future’. However, the Fenwick-Owens were divorced in 1932, the year in which he married Zella Evelyn Oxley.

In July 1931 there were press reports of a gift to the Natural History Museum of specimens of two skins and a skull from bears which must have been retained when he donated the rest of his collection from China in 1912. The bear, mentioned in Wallace’s book, was said to be the ‘Blue Bear’ or Tibetan Bear usually now considered as an extremely rare subspecies of the Brown Bear (Ursus arctos pruinosus).

He may have been living in Dorset, if not at Rempstone Hall, after his divorce because he is shown as lending pictures for an exhibition in Dorchester in 1934. After another divorce in 1940 he married Denise Margaret Louise Cash (born 1914) in Suffolk in the same year.

George Fenwick-Owen died on 21 November 1971 at Woodbridge in Suffolk, leaving £1,472.

Therefore, we can the dates to the entry in the Eponym Dictionary of Mammals: 1882-1971.

*His son from this marriage was Roderic Fenwick Owen (1921-2011); obituary in The Independent here.

Wallace HF, 1913. The Big Game of Central and Western China. Being an Account of a Journey from Shanghai to London Overland Across the Gobi Desert. London: John Murray