REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS 5 



antediluvian animals, without the affections or sensi- 

 bilities of flesh and blood these only lifted their 

 speaking eyes to the Eastern heavens, and had to all 

 appearance come out of this long tempest of trial 

 unscathed and hardly diminished/ These ' innumerable 

 camels' were all of the Bactrian breed, and evidence 

 of the extremes of cold and heat endured in this 

 enterprise of the Kalmucks may be found in the fact 

 that, during the early stages of the flight, circles of 

 men, women and children were found frozen stiff 

 round the camp-fires in the morning, while in the last 

 stage the horde passed for ten days through a waterless 

 desert with only an eight-days' supply, and yet arrived 

 * without sensible loss ' of these creatures on the shore 

 of the Chinese lake. 



The constant references to the Bactrian camels made 

 by De Quincey, and his careful repetition of their 

 distinctive name, show his appreciation of the part they 

 played. But in the end he is still under the dominion 

 of the accepted opinion about camels in general. They 

 are ' arid and adust ' creatures of the sand and the hot 

 desert, rather than of the mountain and the cold desert 

 or steppe, and the South Siberian snows. It is this 

 distinction of habit and habitat which gives novelty to 

 Mr. Hagenbeck's suggestion. The physical barrier of 

 the Himalayas and the Hindoo-Khoosh not only 

 separates the two species with a completeness not seen 



