Update 05/22/10, the book about Giant Pandas has already sold.

We have been busy on administrative duties the last couple of weeks, so we are not on the ball with new merchandise, but we sat down and put up a few new items for sale. One is "Trailing the Giant Panda" by Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt which describes the intrepid pair, armed with .38s and ready for action as they plunge further into rural China.We found a short entry on a mythical monster as they crossed the Mekong River in China in the late 1920s during a period of civil wars after the collapse of the Empire:

On the 11^thof January we crossed the Mekong. Its gorge at this point is much more rugged than the Salween. The mountains that form it are very steep and there is little of any cultivation. It looks what it is, one of the desolate places of the earth. The river itself was not as handsome as its sister stream to the west. It was green and rather sluggish. One of our Kashmiri servants, Lusu, who had been with us in Turkestan three years ago, told us that in the Mekong there was a Crim. The only time we ever heard of this fabulous monster before was at Maralbashi,thousands of miles away, where our shikaris were much worried because we insisted on taking a bath in the river, which they said was haunted by one. A Crim, incidentally, is a creature that lives in a deep pool.It eats people and cattle, some even say whole, caravans. Naturally descriptions of it are vague, but all agree on one point,—that it is

“More o’ horrible and awful,

That e’en to dream wad be unlawful.”

Incidentally, Baber in the account of his journey mentions this fable of the Mekong, but, not being as learned as our Kashmiri, he merely calls it a blanket fish.

That night we spent in the town of Shayang. Here we got our first glimpse of’ the scourge the bands of robbers have been to the inoffensive small folk of the countryside. The main street was a line of ruins. House after house was bare blackened mud walls and piles of debris. In corners of their former homes the natives had put together rude hovels of bamboo and mud. The yamen was destroyed. The scene was as desolate as the devastated area in France. We asked what had happened, and were told that a year ago the bandits had descended and given the town to fire and sword. The leader had been a man named Yung.I am glad to say that since then he was killed by his followers in a dispute over the division of spoils.

The pictured book has been sold and is no longer available Please visit our store for more selections