THE SNOW CAMEL.
THE Times of Tuesday last contains an interesting " appreciation " of an unfamiliar animal by Mr. Carl Hagenbeek, the proprietor of the Thierpark at Hamburg, and the greatest importer of wild animals both into Europe and America. "The best animal for the Klondike climate," he writes, "is the big Siberian camel. These camels transport all merchandise from China to Russia, and can stand Siberian cold as well as the greatest heat. They never need shelter, and sleep out in the deep snow They can carry from 5 cwt. to 6 cwt., and also go in harness and pull as much as a big horse. They can cross mountains as well as level country. As for the difficulty of procuring them, there is none. I can deliver as many as may be wanted for 240 apiece in London or Grimsby, or EGO, duty paid, in New York." The two-humped Bactrian camel, of which Mr. Hagenbeck speaks, is the only beast of burden, not excepting the reindeer, of which Englishmen have absolutely no practical experience. It was not procurable for the Afghan wars, even the native Afghan camel being a descendant of the Southern breed which has migrated to the hills, while the snow camel keeps north of the Central Asian line. The Russians are in fact the only Europeans who are acquainted with this universal beast of transport of Northern Asia, while in Europe itself it has not been seen since the revolt of the Tartars in the reign of the Empress Catharine.
In that memorable and bloodstained exodus, when the Tartars fled from the banks of the Volga to the Great Wall of China, their herds of snow camels alone saved the remnant of the people ; and when, after five months, the flying horde, reduced from six hundred thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand souls, together with the pursuing Bashkirs, plunged into the waters of the Lake of Tengis, "like a host of lunatics pursued by a host of fiends." They were still riding on the camels on which
they had started in the snows of winter, and crossed the ice of the Russian rivers. "Ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, not one survived," writes De Quincey, "only the camels. These arid and adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some antediluvian animals, without the affections or sensibilities of flesh and blood—these only lifted their speaking eyes to the Eastern heavens, and had to all appear- -dice come out of this long tempest of trial unscathed and aardly diminished." These "innumerable camels" were all of the Bactrian breed, and evidence of the extremes of cold and heat endured in this enterprise of the Kalmucks may be found in the fact that during the beginning stages of the flight circles of men, women, and children were found frozen stiff round the camp fires in the morning, while in the last stage the horde passed for ten days through a waterless desert with only an eight-days' supply, and yet arrived "without sensible loss" of these creatures on the shore of the Chinese lake.
The constant references to the Bactrian camels made by De Quincey, and his careful repetition of their distinctive name, show his appreciation of the part they played. But in the end he is still under the dominion of the accepted opinion about camels in general. They are "arid and adust "—creatures of the sand and the hot desert, rather than of the mountain and the cold desert or steppe, and the South Siberian snows. It is this distinction of habit and habitat which gives novelty to Mr. Hagenbeck's letter in the Times. The physical barrier of the Himalayas and the Hindoo-Khoosh not only separates the two species with a completeness not seen in the case of any other breed of domesticated animal, and has relegated one solely to the use of the yellow men, and the other to the service of the black or brown men. Tf.- one-humped camel of the South has migrated under do ,estication into the Afghan hills ; there it has developed a thick coat of hair and a power of climbing, but neither the sturdiness nor the cold. resisting powers of the Bactrian species. From Afghanistan the Southern camel has followed the trade-routes into Turkestan. There, too, it has been acclimatised; but it is not the indigenous animal, and cannot adapt itself to the extreme cold of South Siberia or the trade-route from East to West. On the other hand, the love of the Siberian camel for cold and the inhospitable steppes is even more strongly marked than that of the Southern species for the lands of sun and heat. It makes no Southern invasion of the Indian plain, and such caravans as do penetrate to the Indus Valley come through Afghanistan in the cold season and return before the summer. The Southern species, with its indiffer- ence to thirst and heat, makes the stronger appeal to the imagination. But the camel of the North, which can endure not only thirst, but freezing cold, long spells of hunger, and a bed of snow, is not only the stronger, but the better equipped species. Before the summer heat it sheds its coat. But by September it grows a garment of fur almost as thick as a buffalo robe, and equally cold-resisting. It is far morely strongly built than the Southern came]. It does not " split " when on slippery ground, though it falls on moist, wet clay which yields to the foot. On ice and frozen snow it stands firmly, and can travel far, partly because it has developed a harder foot-pad than the Southern species, partly because it has a kind of claw-toe projecting beyond the pad of the foot. It is said that the cross between the male Bactrian and the female Arabian camel is among the best, but that when the parentage is reversed the progeny is useless. Major Leonard, who notes this belief of camel-breeders, states that many years ago General Harlan marched two thousand Bactrian camels four hundred miles, crossed the Indian Calleatills in ice and snow, and lost only one animal, and that by an accident.
The superiority of the Northern over the Southern camel can be accounted for on logical grounds. On the high plateaus, steppes, and deserts of Mongolia and South Sibeiia
the camel is in its native home. There, on the plain of Tsaidam, the wild camel has at last been found; and in this arid, cold, and waterless region, where the herds are said to travel seventy miles to drink, it still maintains itself, though the Tartars kill it for its flesh and skin. Prejvalski, while doing full justice to the endurance and hardiness of the Bactrian camel, insists too much on its affinity with the wild species. "If confined in an enclosure, although supplied with the best of food, the camel will pine and die," he writes. This is not correct, for the Bactrian camel thrives in a small enclosure at the Zoo, and, if not overfed, lives long and use- fully in menageries. It can also stand a sea-voyage. Nothing but too much comfort or a damp climate seems to hurt it. For food it prefers dry salty plants and bushes, and grows sick and lean on good pasture. The salty efflorescence of the- steppes is eagerly eaten by it, and in this country it prefers dry food, especially wheat-straw, and hay. Prejvalski's camels would eat almost anything,—straw, bleached bones, old pack-saddles, straps, and leather. The Mongols told him of camels which had been without food for a long time, and then devoured an old tent belonging to their owner. They even ate meat and fish, and one of the traveller's camels made a meal of the bird-skins ready for stuffing.
The strongest proof that this is a beast made to endure not heat but cold, not the hot sands but the frozen snows, is the method of management adopted by the Mongol owners of the herds. "Nothing will induce an experienced Mongol to. undertake a journey on camels in the hot season," writes Prejvalski. But from the end of September throughout the winter they cross deep snow, climb mountains, and perform services unequalled by any other animal. They carry tea- chests weighing from 4 cwt. to 5 cwt., can scale passes 12,000 ft. above the sea-level—Prejvalski's camels crossed eight of these in a journey of six hundred and sixty miles—and are driven in carts and ridden. In summer they are watered every forty-eight hours, in winter they can de without water for eight days. They are not only hardy, but long-lived. A Mongol camel begins to earn his living at four years old, and will carry the same burden until from twenty five to thirty. Some live to be useful for some years beyond this limit. In the tea-caravans from Kalgan the camels make two journeys each winter, and earn £7 per camel. As most of their food is picked up en route, this leaves a good profit to the Mongol owners. Though these camels are owned in hundreds of thousands by the tribes of Central Asia, and are constantly in movement by the caravan routes, the direction of them is almost ;universally from East to West or West to East, and the caravans do not enter China beyond the limits of the steppe. This accounts for their being out of touch with all English trade and travel, and renders it difficult to understand whence Mr. Hagen- beck can get as many as be pleases. The answer is,—at Tiflis. This is the terminus of the caravan route, and the present western limit of the wanderings of the Bactrian camel. There they come in thousands every year, arriving in the depth of winter, and leaving before the snows melt on the southern slope of the Caucasus. There, after the caravans have unloaded, the camels can be bought cheap, and be shipped from the Black Sea coast, to which they are brought either by rail or road.
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