10 



THE USES OF THE CAMEL. 



embraces in the camel countries the Canary Islands, Morocco, 

 Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, the Great Desert back of those coun- 

 tries, and Egypt on the continent of Africa, Arabia, Asiatic 

 Turkey, Persia, Cabool, Beloochistan, Hindoostan, Birmah, 

 Thibet, Mongolia, a portion of Siberia, and Tartary in Asia, the 

 Crimea, and European Turkey. 



It will be seen that we have within these limits seasons of 

 the most intense cold as well as tropical heat. 



In conversing with a venerable Arab, in Algiers, on the 

 subject of introducing camels into the United States, I suggested 

 the propriety of purchasing the mountain breed, which are 

 used chiefly between the northern limit of the Great Desert and 

 the Mediterranean, where the climate does not vary much from 

 that of our Western country. " By no means," said he ; " take 

 the desert camels. The animals that can stand extreme heat 

 can support equally well extreme cold." 



Erman writes, under date of February 20th, and with a 

 temperature of twenty-five degrees of Fahrenheit below zero : — 

 " On the Chinese side (at Kiachta) we saw seventy fine camels 

 turned loose, and feeding on the frozen and withered grass. 

 They fear the severe winters of this climate as little as the 

 parching heat in the sand-steppes ;" and Marsh, our former 

 minister to Constantinople, now Minister at Turin, adds to the 

 forep^oino^ : — 



" So numerous is the camel in these frozen realms, that 

 almost the whole commerce between Russia and China, by way 

 of Kiachta, is carried on by means of them, and they transport 

 merchandise over the vast distance between Orenburg on the 

 Ural, and Pretropawlowsk on the peninsula of Kamschatka. 

 In the month of October, Timkorski met on the desert of Gobi, 

 in latitude 46° north, and at the height of two thousand five 

 hundred feet above the sea, a herd of twenty thousand camels. 

 The Russian expedition against Khiva and Bokhara, in 1840, 

 employed more than an equal number, and Berghaus estimates 

 the number of camels in European Russia at not less than one 

 hundred thousand. 



" Father Hue's lively narrative of his travels in Tartary is 

 full of similar proofs of the power of the camel to brave the icy 

 frosts and chilling blasts of that frigid region, and we may 

 reasonably conclude that he is able to endure the greatest 



