424 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Later on I met a Mongol hunter who said the Mongols shoot the wild 

 camel for the sake of its skin, and they also catch the young ones to train 

 up for riding purposes, and I was assured that these would go for 200 miles a 

 day for a week, but they can never be broken to carry a load. They were 

 described to me as being smaller than the tame species, and were said to have 

 short smooth hair in place of the long hair of the ordinary Mongolian camel. 

 I was once shown the track of a wild camel, and it was certainly very much 

 smaller than that of the tame one. 



Lattimore (1929) contributes very interesting information con- 

 cerning the Wild Camel of the Gobi. In passing along the more 

 northerly route westward from Edsin Gol, he reports (p. 217) : 



The old way is said to pass through the chief country of the wild camels. 

 I was told this by several caravan masters, and one young Mohammedan 

 camel puller told me that he had seen one which was shot by a Turki cara- 

 van master. It was of a grayish color, of about the same height as an ordinary 

 caravan camel, but slender in build and with very small humps "like a 

 woman's breasts." 



Wild camels are also found nearer to the Edsin Gol. I was told that a 

 Mongol, the year before, had caught a very young one, but when I passed 

 it had already escaped to the desert again. They say that on the Two Dry 

 Stages the wild camels come sometimes out of the hills to look at the 

 caravan herds at pasture, but that even so they seldom come at all near and 

 are shy and almost impossible to shoot. There are men who say that even 

 when caught extremely young they can never be tamed; but a Hami man 

 told me he had known an Edsin Gol Mongol who used one for riding, and that 

 the wild camel is considered a very fast and most distinguished mount for a 

 Mongol who fancies himself. Reliable information about wild camels collected 

 by modern travelers remains incomplete, but there seems to be a general 

 agreement that they can be tamed for riding, though never for carrying loads; 

 and everybody who has been told that they can be ridden has been told fan- 

 tastic tales of the distances they can cover. It seems to be evident that it is a 

 rare and startling thing even for a Mongol to catch and tame one. 



In describing an area in the Gobi near the "House of the False 

 Lama" (about lat. 42 30' N., long. 98 E.), Lattimore writes (p. 

 243) : "To this whole series of springs there come at night antelope, 

 wild asses, and, they say, wild camels. . . . The tracks which 

 were pointed out to me as those of wild camels were frequent. 

 They were [not?] more than half the size of the tracks of a caravan 

 camel, and more elliptical in shape. Nor, at least as it seemed to me, 

 were the toe prints quite so deep perhaps because the wild camel, 

 whose gait is not affected by the carrying of loads, places his weight 

 differently. The caravan men were positive that the tracks were not 

 made by half-grown camels belonging to Mongols." 



In former times, at least, Dzungaria formed part of the range of 

 the Wild Camel. Elias writes (1874, pp. 79-80) : "To the north of 

 the Tian-Shan, the evidence I received on this subject in 1872 from 

 intelligent Chinese travellers, as well as from the native Mongols, 

 is undoubted. Many of the former, who declared they had seen 

 these animals between Kobdo and Hi, Uliassutai and Kuchen, &c., 



