4 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS 



as much as a big horse. They can cross mountains as 

 well as level country. As for the difficulty of pro- 

 curing them, there is none. I can deliver as many as 

 may be wanted for forty pounds apiece in London or 

 Grimsby, or sixty pounds, duty paid, in New York.' 

 The two-humped Bactrian camel, of which Mr. Hagen- 

 beck speaks, is the only beast of burden, not excepting 

 the reindeer, of which Englishmen have absolutely no 

 practical experience. The Russians are, in fact, the only 

 Europeans who are acquainted with this universal beast 

 of transport of Northern Asia, while in Europe itself it 

 has not been seen since the revolt of the Tartars in the 

 reign of the Empress Catharine. 



In that memorable and blood-stained exodus, when 

 the Tartars fled from the banks of the Volga to the 

 Great Wall of China, their herds of snow-camels alone 

 saved the remnant of the people ; and when, after five 

 months, the flying horde, reduced from six hundred 

 thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand souls, 

 together with the pursuing Bashkirs, plunged into the 

 waters of the Lake of Tengis, ' like a host of lunatics 

 pursued by a host of fiends,' they were still riding on 

 the camels on which they had started in the snows of 

 winter, and crossed the ice of the Russian rivers. < Ox, 

 cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, not one survived,' 

 writes De Quincey, ' only the camels. These arid and 

 adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some 



