830 
THROUGH ASIA 
notices that its humps are flattened and its hair chafed 
by the pack-saddle. 
Although I am not a zoologist, I will nevertheless 
venture the supposition (which, however, I was in a posi- 
tion to modify later on) that these very qualities are simply 
traits of atavism, proofs that the wild camel was at 
one time tame ; and that the generation which now 
wanders so freely among the sand-hills of the Desert 
of Gobi still retains an unconscious, instinctive terror 
of everything that recalls the slavery of their forefathers — 
the time when they stood bound by the camp-fire, when 
the tyrant man bored a hole through their nostrils with 
an awl, and when their humps were pressed and their hair 
chafed by his cruel burdens. 
Mohammed Bai, the last shepherd we met near the 
river, who had spent all his life in the desert and forest, 
was as familiar with the habits of the wild camel as he 
was with those of his sheep. In fact, the ten or twelve 
persons of his little aghil lived chiefly on the flesh of 
the wild camel during the winter months. He had 
shot three that year, in spite of a wretched gun, which 
would not kill at more than fifty paces, so that he was 
obliged to conceal himself in the eye of the wind and 
patiently wait until a camel came within range. For 
the moment the wild camel scents danger he sets off as 
hard as he can gallop and does not stop for one or 
two days. The previous year the old man contrived to 
capture a young one, not more than a week old. The 
whole of the spring and summer it grazed with the sheep, 
and became quite as accustomed to people as any tame 
camel. Then it unfortunately died. 
It might perhaps be inferred, that the ease with which 
the wild camel becomes used to men is but another trait 
of atavism, were it not for the contrary fact, that the tame 
camel quite as readily forgets that it has been the slave 
of man. When my caravan came to grief in the Takla- 
makan Desert the previous year one of the camels suc- 
ceeded in reaching the Khotan-daria alone, and ranged 
the forest for several days uncontrolled. When Ahmed 
