The Lady and the Panda Read Online Free PDF Page B

reported hearing a seductive summons. “Spirits of the high places of earth, from the barren boulders and snows, hinted of days when the driving storm caked the ice on beard and face; spirits from the desert sang of blowing sand and blinding sun,” they wrote. Vowing not to return empty-handed, the brothers decided to head east in pursuit of the animal that had “never been killed by a white man.”
    Funded by a generous patron of the Field Museum, to the tune, it wasreported, of $100,000, the Roosevelts traveled to panda country via French Indochina with a strong crew that included a handsome young Chinese American named Jack Young, who would go on to conduct many expeditions himself and play an important role in Ruth Harkness's life.
    Grueling as the Roosevelts' journey was, the two brothers were successful, shooting a giant panda on April 13, 1929. In an impressive show of fraternal loyalty, they would always claim to have fired simultaneously, killing the animal together, and sharing the credit in equal parts.
    As their panda, as well as the purchased skin of another, went to the Field Museum for examination, stuffing, and exhibition, envious natural history museums all over America began to pine for their own pelts. The Roosevelt triumph opened the floodgates, inflaming “the imaginations of the younger generation of American would-be explorers,”
The China Journal
would write, launching waves of daredevils in “expedition after expedition” that marched into “panda country along the Tibetan borders of West China after this rare and elusive animal.”
    In New York, in the summer of 1934, as Bill spoke to Ruth about his own plans for a new expedition, the bar on panda hunting had been raised even higher. Killing a panda could still bring glory, as it had for the Brooke Dolan expedition in 1931 but capturing one alive would be a historic achievement.
    Noting the competitive climate,
The Washington Post
predicted a gold rush. “Want to make a small fortune—perhaps as much as $25,000?” it asked. Nab a giant panda, and “the heads of all the zoos in the world will beat a path to your door to bid on it.” It warned, however, that if hunters wanted that cash, they would have to be quick, for it would be only the very first live panda that would warrant such a large payday.
    Bill Harkness and Larry Griswold did hurry, making plans to leave by the end of September. During the frenzied preparations, however, Bill found himself overtaken by something beyond expedition fever. At the very last moment, he and Ruth decided to marry.
    In a civil service in Rye, New York, on Sunday, September 9, 1934, Ruth Elizabeth McCombs and William Harvest Harkness, Jr., made their relationship official. Plain and simple, the ceremony was held in a municipalbuilding. There had been no ambition for a proper wedding, and now, with the latest news from the field coming in, there was no time for a traditional honeymoon. Just two days before Bill and Ruth's vows, explorer Dean Sage had reached one of the farthest outposts in China in his quest to land a giant panda. The race was on.
    Heading up what newspapers loftily referred to as the GriswoldHarkness Asiatic Expedition, Bill and Larry, along with two friends, headed out on September 22 for what they said could amount to a threeyear endeavor.
    That meant that within two weeks of her wedding, Harkness was anchored at home in New York City, sitting vigil for a man who had darted to the other side of the world in the company of his little hell-raising fraternity. Before marriage, she would have been free to travel, but now, with a husband gone on a major expedition, her duty was to sit tight.
    AFTER A FEW WILD adventures in and around Borneo, and some highclass socializing with Hollywood leading man Ronald Colman in Indonesia, Bill Harkness and company finally reached Shanghai in January 1935. Within weeks, everything began to deteriorate.
    First of all, the members of the Griswold-Harkness