INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xxvii 



that they have been known for at least 450 years. — V. 'Izzat 

 Ullah, who travelled as a ' Pundit ' in the employment 

 of Moorcroft, mentions that Khotan is said to abound in wild 

 asses, wild camels, cattle, and musk-deer.^ —VI. Mr. R, Shaw, 

 in his * High Tartary ' : ' The Yoozbashee says they (lyre- 

 horned antelopes), go in large herds, as do also wild 

 camels (J) in the great desert eastward ' (p. 168). — VII. Sir 

 Douglas Forsyth, in a letter which he wrote to me from 

 Shahidullah, on his last mission to Kashgar, mentioned that 

 the officer who met them there had shot the wild camel in 

 the Desert of Turfan. It was a good deal smaller than the 

 tame camel. — VIII. The same gentleman in the printed 

 report of his mission gives more detailed evidence, appa- 

 rently from another native informant, which I quote below.^ 

 IX. Mr. Ney Elias also received strong and repeated evi- 

 dence of the existence of wild camels north of the Thian 

 Shan ' from intelligent Chinese travellers, as well as from the 

 native Mongols . . . Many of the former, who declared they 

 had seen these animals between Kobdo and Hi, Uliassutai 

 and Kuchen, I questioned as to their being really wild, or 

 having become so subsequent to domestication ; but the 

 answers were always emphatically that they had never 

 been tame .... Moreover, the wild camels were always 



1 y. R. As. Soc, vii. 319. 



2 * The wild animals of Lob are the wild camel. ... I have 

 seen one which Avas killed. . . . It is a small animal, not much 

 bigger than a horse, and has two humps. It is not like a tame camel ; 

 its limbs are very thin, and it is altogether slim built, I have seen 

 them in the desert together with herds of wild horses. They are 

 not timid, and do not run away at the sight of a man. They do nothing 

 unless attacked ; they then run away, or else they turn and attack the 

 huntsman ; they are very fierce, and swift in their action as an arrow 

 shot from the bow ; they kill by biting and trampling under foot, and 

 they kick too like a cow. They are hunted for the sake of their wool, 

 which is very highly prized, and sold to the Turfan merchants.' — Rep. 

 OH Mission to Yarkand in 1873, p. 53. 



The word applied to the wild horse mentioned here is Kulan, 

 which is the Turki name of the Tibetan Kya?ig, more properly a 

 species of wild ass. This e'quivoqiie is probably at the bottom of the 

 many mentions of wild horses ; but I would not say so positively. 



