xxviii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



described to me as smaller in size and much darker in 

 colour than tame ones,'' — X. Dr. Bellew says: 'The 

 deserts on the east of this territory, in the vicinity of Lob 

 .... are the home of the wild camel. It is still, as of 

 old, hunted there, and is described as a very vicious and 

 fleet animal, and of small size, not much larger than a 

 large horse. A Kirghiz shepherd, who had resided for 

 some years at Lob, told me that he had frequently seen 

 them at graze, and had himself joined in many hunting 

 expeditions against them for the sake of their wool, which 

 is very highly prized for the manufacture of a superior 

 kind of camlet.'^ — XI. The Russian Father Hyacinthe, in 

 his memoirs on Mongolia, speaking of Middle Mongolia, 

 says that there are found wild camels, wild mules, wild 

 asses, wild horses, and wild goats, especially on the more 

 westerly steppes.^ — XII. Captain Valikhanoff says that 

 Chinese works very often speak of wild camel hunts, which 

 formed one of the amusements of the rulers of the cities of 

 Eastern Turkestan in past ages, though he could not get 

 information regarding the animals."* — XIII. Several ad- 

 ditional testimonies will be found cited by Ritter (iii. 341, 



342).' 



We have indulged in that digression after wild camels, 

 which Prejevalsky denied himself. He passed on into the 

 lofty and uninhabited desert of Northern Tibet, which 

 extends for a width in latitude of some 500 miles, at an 

 altitude of 14,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea, and reached 



* Proc. R. Geog. Soc, xviii. 80. 



2 Kashmir and Kashgar, p. 348. 



^ Denkwiirdigkeiten tiber die Mongolei, p. no. 



* Russians in Central Asia, p. 141. 



^ Ritter (ii. 241), speaking of the ancient Turks of the Gobi, says ; 

 — ' Their prisoners of war were compelled, like the Roman prisoners 

 among the Germans, to act as their herdsmen. Sheep, oxen, asses, 

 horses, and camels constituted their wealth. These -last have also 

 existed in those tracts yr^w the inost ancient times in a mild state, so 

 that we must believe this to be their natural habitat, and in all proba- 

 bility they were first tamed by the Turk nomads.' I cannot find that 

 Ritter has authority for the words which I have italicised ; perhaps 

 they only represent his own impression. 



