CHAPTER LXVI. 
WHERE THE WILD CAMEL LIVES 
I N my castle-building moments I had often conceived 
the wish to see a wild camel and possess its skin ; 
but never, even in my wildest dreams, did 1 imagine I 
should make such close and intimate acquaintance with 
that remarkable animal as now proved to be the case. 
Although I had seen a stuffed specimen in the Academy 
of Sciences at St. Petersburg, brought home by Przheval- 
sky, and knew that Littledale and Pievtsoff and his officers 
had shot them, I could never help thinking of the animal 
with some degree of scepticism, and always imagined it 
enveloped in a sort of mystic glamour. 
Lest, after this solemn exordium, the reader should be 
deluded into thinking I am a mighty Nimrod of the gun, 
I must hasten to explain that I have never shot a wild 
camel in my life. In the first place, I am no sportsman 
— a fact to which I ow'e the advantage of having had 
time for many a scientific observation that otherwise 
would not have been made. Secondly, I am short- 
sighted, which entails the great disadvantage, that the 
quarry is out of range before I have got a glimpse of 
it ; and thirdly, even though I had been a sportsman, 1 
should assuredly have hesitated to send a ball into such a 
noble creature as the wild camel. Then I always have 
the feeling that there is nothing very clever about taking 
a life which you have not the power to give back again ; 
and failing that power, it appears to me cjuestionable how 
far a man has the right to kill unnecessarily. 
As, however, we were now approaching the special 
haunt of the wild camel, namely, the most inaccessible 
parts of the Desert of Gobi, I naturally was anxious not 
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