These animals had been noticed by Cosmas [who calls them agriobous] in the 6th century, and by Aelian in the 3rd.  The latter speaks of them as black cattle with white tails, from which fly-flappers were made for Indian kings.  And the great Kalidasa thus sang of the Yak, according to a learned (if somewhat rugged) version ascribed to Dr. Mill.  The poet personifies the Himalaya:—­

  “For Him the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide
  Whisk here and there, playful, their tails’ bushy pride,
  And evermore flapping those fans of long hair
  Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair,
  Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing)
  His title of Honour, ‘The Dread Mountain King.’”

Who can forget Pere Huc’s inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, “walking with their legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung beneath their bellies quite to the ground.  The monstrous beasts looked exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy.”  Or that other, even more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, in the moment of congelation, and thus preserved throughout the winter, gigantic “flies in amber.”

(N. et E. XIV. 478; J.  As. IX. 199; J.  A. S. B. IX. 566, XXIV. 235; Shaw, p. 91; Ladak, p. 210; Geog.  Magazine, April, 1874; Hoffmeister’s Travels, p. 441; Rubr. 288; Ael. de Nat.  An. XV. 14; J.  A. S. B. I. 342; Mrs. Sinnett’s Huc, pp. 228, 235.)

NOTE 4.—­Ramusio adds that the hunters seek the animal at New Moon, at which time the musk is secreted.

The description is good except as to the four tusks, for the musk deer has canine teeth only in the upper jaw, slender and prominent as he describes them.  The flesh of the animal is eaten by the Chinese, and in Siberia by both Tartars and Russians, but that of the males has a strong musk flavour.

The “immense number” of these animals that existed in the Himalayan countries may be conceived from Tavernier’s statement, that on one visit to Patna, then the great Indian mart for this article, he purchased 7673 pods of musk.  These presumably came by way of Nepal; but musk pods of the highest class were also imported from Khotan via Yarkand and Leh, and the lowest price such a pod fetched at Yarkand was 250 tankas, or upwards of 4_l._ This import has long been extinct, and indeed the trade in the article, except towards China, has altogether greatly declined, probably (says Mr. Hodgson) because its repute as a medicine is becoming fast exploded.  In Sicily it is still so used, but apparently only as a sort of decent medical viaticum, for when it is said “the Doctors have given him musk,” it is as much as to say that they have given up the patient.