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a great deal longer, for it has been ascertained that the average weight 

 of an Indian elephant is equal to that of twenty-four men, each of ten 

 stones, or to a subaltern and his whole section of light infantry. 



In Tibet, but there only, a variety of large sheep is used as a beast 

 of burden, although it might well be supposed that its own immense 

 double fleece would be an all-sufficient load for it. In the New World 

 there was but one beast of burden, the llama, a diminutive species of 

 camel, by the structure of his foot and by his constitution fit only for 

 mountain regions. His average load is sixty-five pounds. One camel 

 of the Old World, then, is equal to six of the New. It will appear, from 

 the facts now stated, that an English dray-horse, on a good road, will 

 draw the united burdens of two elephants, one camel, and five oxen. 

 His power of transport is superior to that of five of the best camels that 

 Arabia ever produced, and to that of thirty-four of the camels of the 

 New World. 



For riding, the superiority of the horse is equally great. The 

 elephant, walking his only pace, will travel at the rate of four miles 

 an hour, but it would distress him greatly to continue it for twenty miles. 

 It would take him five hours to perform this journey, which the horse 

 would perform in one hour. Of [the domestic animals the dromedary, 

 or common camel, is the one that, in speed, approaches the nearest to 

 the horse, and its pace is probably equal to about one-half that of the 

 horse. The messenger camel will travel, it is said, one hundred miles 

 in twenty-four hours ; but an English blood-horse has been known 

 to perform a journey of double that distance within the same time. 

 But in the case of the camel, the pace is "a killing" one, not 

 to the animal, but to the man ; for it is said that the life of the pro- 

 fessional camel-rider, the Shuter Suwar of the Persians, does not exceed 

 five years' duration. 



But the horse has been at length surpassed, although by no means 

 superseded — indeed, in no degree even displaced, for it has increased in 

 number — by a new power. A few years ago, a meritorious operative, a 

 heaven-born engineer, invented, almost created a machine, which in 

 speed eclipses Eclipse, and leaves Flying Childers " nowhere," — which 

 can draw with ease the load of a thousand, or if need were, often thousand 

 elephants, and which, in one-fourth part of the time, without fatigue to 

 itself or to the rider, can perform the feat which saved Turpin's neck by 

 proving an alibi. That machine is now at work in the native country 

 of the slow camel and slow and ponderous elephant, a creditable 

 tribute to George Stephenson and the nineteenth century. The son cf 



c 



