THE CAMEL OF THE STEPPES. 61 



inconvenience he can go without drink for twenty-three and even 

 twenty-five days. In the way of solid food, a ball of cake weighing 

 from a pound to a pound and a quarter, will suffice him for a whole 

 day. Often when he has set out on his journey fasting, he contents 

 himself with browsing on the way a few green or dry bushes, and in 

 the evening sups on a handful of dried beans. But this singular 

 abstemiousness is not his sole good quality ; his vigour, his docility, 

 his swiftness render him equally valuable. 



The ordinary burden of a small camel is from 600 to 800 Ibs. ; a 

 large camel will cany 1000 Ibs. or upwards, from thirty to thirty-five 

 miles a-day ; but the maharis, or those which are used for speed alone, 

 will travel daily from twenty to thirty leagues. 



The camel of the Steppes, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is, as 

 I have already hinted, the Bactrian or camel strictly so called. This 

 animal differs from his African congener in several very important 

 physical characteristics, and perhaps also in some moral peculiarities. 

 His two humps are smaller than the one hump of the dromedary. He 

 is a little larger than the latter ; his average stature is from six feet 

 and a half to seven feet. His hair, of a deep chestnut brown, almost 

 woolly on the humps, the head, and the upper part of the neck, is short 

 and smooth on the body, and hangs in long fringes below the neck and 

 around the fore-legs. He endures without inconvenience the most 

 opposite temperatures, great heat and extreme cold, so that his habitat 

 naturally ranges over an immense extent of country. He is found 

 throughout the zone of the Steppes, even to the confines of Siberia, on 

 the borders of Lake Baikal ; he was formerly still more common in 

 Hindostan, but has now almost disappeared, owing to the great con- 

 sumption entailed by the military expeditions of our East Indian 

 Government. 



The camel is an excellent traveller, but his gait is rough and awk- 

 ward, and almost insupportable by those who have not been long 

 habituated to it. In this relation we may borrow an anecdote from 

 Madame Hommaire de Hell :* Her dragoman, a Frenchman, named 

 * Madame de Hell, " Voyage aux Steppes de la Mer Caspienne," tome !'' 



