122 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



gards the equine family. We owned for some 

 time a wild ass that had been given us by 

 Captain Keyes, then Consul in Tarbut. We 

 were on the march from Meshed to Seistan, and 

 after doing several days' journey, when one of 

 our mules had got galled, I determined to make 

 the big, handsome, curly-coated donkey earn his 

 feed by carrying a load. But like the workman, 

 though he " ate well and drank well and slept 

 well," the idea of doing any work put him " all 

 of a tremble." I once asked a native hospital 

 assistant, after a rough journey in Chitral, how 

 it was so many of his medicine bottles had got 

 broken. "Sir," he replied, "mule transport is 

 inauspicious for medicine bottles." It was thus 

 with our onager, very inauspicious for anything 

 put on his back ! Then I told off a long-legged 

 native groom, who hungered for a mount, to ride 

 him. He tried very hard, but the wild ass, with- 

 out biting or kicking or the display of vice of 

 any sort, firmly but humorously declined to carry 

 anybody. So he resumed the roll in the caravan 

 he had chosen for himself, a mere hanger-on, 

 running free to stop and pick a thistle or do 

 anything he listed. In Seistan he joined our 

 little herd of gazelle in an enclosure, whence he 

 made it his special mission to break out and 

 clear a gap into the garden for his comrades : I 



