70 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



state of original wildness. The Hiongnu, in Eastern 

 Asia, belong to the nations who earliest tamed and trained 

 wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the 

 great Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo, (Historia Regionum 

 occidentalium, quae Si-yu vocantur, visu et auditu cognita- 

 rum,) affirms that in the middle of the 18th century wild 

 camels, as well as wild horses and wild asses, still wandered 

 in East Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish Geo- 

 graphy, written in the 17th century, speaks of the frequent 

 chase of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, 

 Turfan, and Khotan. Schott translates, from a Chinese 

 author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels are to be found in the 

 countries to the north of China and west of the Hoang-ho, 

 in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier alone (Eegne Animal, T. i. p. 

 257), doubts the present existence of wild camels in the 

 interior of Asia. He believes they have merely " become 

 wild;" because Calmucks, and others having Buddhistic reli- 

 gious affinities with them, set camels and other animals at 

 liberty, in order " to acquire to themselves merit for the other 

 world." According to Greek witnesses of the times of 

 Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus, the Ailanitic 

 Gulf of the Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian 

 camel. (Bitter's Asien, Bd. viii. s. 670, 672, and 746.) 

 The discovery of fossil camel bones of the ancient world by 

 Captain Cautley and Doctor Falconer, in 1834, in the sub- 

 Himalaya range of the Sewalik hills, is peculiarly deserving 

 of notice. These bones were found with other ancient bones 

 of mastodons, of true elephants, of giraffes, and of a 

 gigantic land tortoise (Colossochelys), twelve feet in length 



