OTHER BEASTS OF BURDEN.
AS long as an Englishman can get a horse, he tries to do without any other beast of burden. The use of dogs is no longer legal, and we have nearly discarded the sturdy ox, even for ploughing. A few are to be seen in Sussex and Wiltshire and on the Cotswold Hills ; in Berkshire, there are some half-dozen teams, among them a famous quartette of red steers belonging to Sir William Throckmorton ; but outside these counties we know of none in England.
Were we right to legislate against the use of dogs for draught P The recent report of the United States' Consul in Belgium raises some doubts as to this. A careful inquiry has been made in Brussels, and the verdict is that dogs are more useful than horses for minor town traffic,—quieter, cleaner, and cheaper. " The first distinctive institution that attracts the attention of a stranger in Belgium," writes the Consul, "is the working-dog. Liege is a city of great wealth and industry, employing as many horses as any other town of its size in Europe; and yet for every horse, at least two dogs are to be seen in its streets." In the early morning, we are told, the boulevards are literally alive with them. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the porter, carriers of all kinds, engage the dog's ser- vices. His step is so much quicker than that of the horse, that he will in an hour cover twice as much ground, and he carries with him a greater burden in proportion to his size. Six hundred pounds is the usual weight for an ordinary dog, though a mastiff often draws as much again. They cost abqut 3d. a day to keep on black bread and horse-flesh, and draught-dogs are now carefully bred, mastiffs crossed with the bull-dog to give lungs and chest fetching the highest prices, averaging from £4 to 26. The Consul concludes by stating his opinion that " there is not an article of merchandise, from a ton of coals to a loaf of bread, sold in our cities, which might not be more advan- tageously delivered by dogs than horses." The Consul is .doubtless thinking of ordinary " tradesmen's " deliveries. It would be ridiculous to expect dogs to take the place a the brewers'-dray horses, or the railway-goods' horses,— but his views certainly deserve consideration. In England, where their use was once common, we seem to look on dogs as .only suitable for draught inside the Arctic circle. The absence of a strong shoulder and bard hoofs suggests cruelty in their employment. Nothing in Holland and Belgium gives an Englishman a keener sense of discomfort than seeing dogs in carts. The present writer at first protested against it as ill- usage. He was assured that a careful inquiry bad been held many years ago ; that Mr. Grantley Berkeley, whose personal affection for animals, as shown in his Memoirs, was almost a passion, had been consulted, and that the verdict had been in favour of continuing their use. Many months of careful observation confirmed this view. No animal so enjoys his work, or does it so willingly, as a dog. Except the elephant, no other animal can be trusted to work alone like the smugglers' dogs between France and Belgium, or collies watching sheep. The present writer has never seen one struck in Holland, and only once in Belgium. They do not fight, and the only drawbacks to their use are their readiness to attack a stranger who approaches their cart when left in their charge, and the severe hydrophobia " scares " which their numbers at times produce. They are exuberantly happy in their daily work, and come of their own accord at the right hour to be harnessed. Small dogs in little carts are always ready and anxious to race against big ones ; and thoug at the Hague the barking and galloping of dogs within the city-bounds is forbidden, as " furious driving " is here, the dogs, when returning with empty carts, may race as much as they please. Two little boys, with their cart drawn by a sturdy bull-terrier, used often to wait for, and race a couple of half-bred mastiffs drawing a cart with two men, the owners running alongside, and jumping on, when the carts—mere narrow shelves like all dog-carts, whether on wheels or sledges—were going at ten miles an hour. There may be cruelty, just as in the use of any other creature. But men are always hardest on a sluggish animal. One donkey suffers more than twenty dogs. The legislation which stopped their use in England was nominally humanitarian. But it has often been asserted that it was chiefly due to the objec- tion which persons who drove horses entertained for dog- carts, and to the country gentleman's dislike of dogs as enemies to game. We should be sorry to see dogs replace ponies in common use. But it should not be illegal to employ them. We have seen a little Pomeranian helping to pull its invalid master's chair, and evidently proud of its work. In this case, it would have been difficult for the policeman to put the law in force. In snow-time we have harnessed a setter and a retriever to a taboggan-sledge, and they enjoyed the fun quite as much as their master,—indeed, they upset us at the first corner.
The English reliance on horses, big and little, is almost justified by the wonderful adaptation for manifold uses which careful breeding has produced. The work of the dog must, in civilised countries, be limited to petty draught on well- made roads and in towns. In the Arctic circle alone he is a necessity to man as a beast of burden. When the Greenland dogs die, the Greenlander must become extinct. It is im- possible for him to drag home the seals, sharks, white whales, and narwhals, which he shoots on the ice, without his dogs, or for the Eskimo to make his long migrations with his family and household goods to fresh hunting-grounds without their aid. If the epidemic of rabies which half-destroyed their teams had not been arrested by the ice-fiord of Jacolashaven, the Greenlanders would by now have been pensioners on Danish charity. It was noticed, as evidence of the absolute dependence of the Arctic man upon the services of the Arctic dog as a beast of burden, that whenever a native lost his dogs, he went very rapidly down-hill in the scale of Eskimo respectability, and became a sort of hanger-on to the fortunate possessor of a sledge-team. Exactly the same degradation has been observed in the case of the Tartar who is too poor to keep his horse, and a corre- sponding rise in the social scale of the " foot" Indians of Patagonia, when a neighbouring tribe of horse-Indians lent them horses, and provided them with hunters to teach their use in the capture of game. On good ground, a team of six Eskimo dogs will draw a load of from eight to ten hundred-weight at a speed of seven miles an hour. Large teams, with light sledges and little except the driver to carry, are wonderfully rapid. Kane, the Arctic traveller, was carried for seven hundred miles at an average rate of fifty- seven miles a day. Lieutenant Schwatka sent two Eskimo with a double team of forty dogs, the sledge having its runners " iced " by pouring water over them, to the rescue of a half-frozen sailor, who was viewed from the ship at a distance of ten miles across an ice-covered bay just before nightfall. Two drivers sat on either side of the sledge, with knives to cut the harness of any dog that might stumble and be dragged to death, and the sledge was driven at per- haps the highest speed ever known. The dash of ten miles was accomplished in twenty-two-and-a-half minutes. But credit- able as such an achievement is to the half-starved descendants of the Arctic wolf, the strongest evidence against the use of the dog for general draught purposes is the fact that wherever the surface, even in the snow regions, is sound, and safe for any other creature than the light and active dogs, the reindeer, or in the more southerly districts, the horse at once takes its place. M. Nordenskiold, in his voyage in the Vega' to the Asiatic shore of liehring Sea, noticed a marked difference between the "Dog Chnkchs," the inhabitants of the shore, and the "Reindeer Chukchs " of the in- terior. The latter were better clothed and in better cir- cumstances. Both showed a kindness to their animals, unusual in semi-savage peoples. The "Coast Claukchs " always carried dog-shoes, neatly made of bags of soft leather, with straps attached, to put on their dogs' feet if out by the sharp snow. The herd of a "Reindeer Chukch" came down from the pasture every morning to meet their master. The leading stag came first, and bade him good morning by gently rubbing his nose against his master's hands. All the other deer were then allowed to do the same, the master taking each by the horn and carefully examining its condition. The inspection over, the whole herd wheeled and returned to the pasture. It would be difficult to name another beast of burden so tame and so efficient as the reindeer. A good reindeer will travel one hundred miles a day over frozen snow, and can draw a weight of three hundred pounds; thus surpassing the dog by one-half in distance and two-thirds in drawing-power. The loads carried by the camels of the Heavy Camel Corps across the Bagncla Desert were very little greater than that drawn by the reindeer across the Northern Steppes. Including the rider, the average weight was about 342 lbs. Even so, they were over- weighted, and the little grey Egyptian horses ridden by the Hussars who accompanied the column, were less exhausted than the larger beasts when the forced march was completed. The Llama, admirable as he was for climbing the step-roads of the Incas which ruined Pizarro's horses, is only an inferior camel ; and the yak, Thibetan goat, and buffalo are highly specialised forms to suit exceptional climates and conditions. The special -metier of the buffalo, for example, is the cultivation of rice-fields, in which it can work knee-deep in mud. As a beast of burden, the elephant must still be considered to hold the first place. His normal load is 800 lbs., so that in India he is reckoned equal to eight ponies, to five pack-mules or stout bullocks, and to three and one-third of a camel. Next to the elephant in general usefulness we should be inclined to place the " trotting ox" of India. "All Indian oxen can be trained to trot," says Mr. Lockwood Kipling. "The sloping quarter and straight hock may possibly account for something in their more horse-like gait. One of the first things to strike a stranger is the hurrying ox." The rekia, a light two-wheeled cart drawn by a pair of oxen, cheap, speedy, and convenient, is the hansom cab of the natives of Bombay. All through the Mabratta country the ox is the common draught animal, differ- ing in speed and size according to the work for which he is re- quired. Cattle of the Nagore breed, used by rich men to draw their state carriages, used to be kept near Delhi for carrying despatches. Mr. Youatt was informed that they would travel with a soldier on their back fifteen or sixteen miles in the day, at the rate of six miles an hour. The Nagore cattle have none of the awkward swinging motion of the legs of the English cow. They bring their bind-legs under them in as straight a line as the horse. -" They are very active," con- tinues Mr. Youatt, "and can clear a five-barred gate with the greatest ease." One owner possessed a calf which would jump an iron railing higher than a gate, and a bull which would leap the same railing to go to water, and having drunk, leap back again. Napoleon borrowed his idea of bullock transport for the first stages of his Russian campaign from the Indian armies; but the Indian bullocks are shod. Napoleon's were not, and the bullock transport was ruined before the frontiers of Poland were reached. But even if this important detail had received attention, it may be doubted whether a large ex- periment in the use of a new beast of burden ever succeeds in an old country. Natural selection never proceeds faster than when controlled by human necessity; and though the dog may be reinstated in the tradesman's cart, the ox will con- tinue to disappear from the dwindling tillage of the English country-side.
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