300 OTHER BEASTS OF BURDEN 
the Chinaman. He loves it as the Hindoo does his 
cow, and paddles by its side in the squashy rice- 
fields, with a smiling contentment on his bland 
countenance, due to a feeling that in his buffalo he 
owns the one thing needful to make his husbandry a 
success and satisfaction. Of all the creatures of the 
flowery land, it is the only one which the Celestial 
takes with him into the countries of the barbarians 
into which he migrates. Long ago the Chinaman in 
Singapore and the Straits Settlements became a 
buffalo breeder, and now he has imported them into 
the Sandwich Islands. There also the trotting ox is 
now established, and is regularly ridden by the Kanaka 
boys. The breed is maintained in great purity, and 
for pace and size they match the best animals of the 
Indian plains. 
But the elephant must still hold the first place 
as a beast of burden. His normal load is eight 
hundred pounds, so that in India he is reckoned equal 
to eight ponies, to five pack-mules or stout bullocks, 
and to three and one-third of a camel. Next to the 
elephant in general usefulness we should be inclined 
to place the “ trotting ox ” of India. “ All Indian 
oxen can be trained to trot,” says Mr. Lockwood 
Kipling. “ The sloping quarter and straight hock 
may possibly account for something in their more 
horselike gait. One of the first things to strike a 
stranger is the hurrying ox. The rekla, a light two- 
wheeled cart drawn by a pair of oxen, cheap, speedy, 
and convenient, is the hansom cab of the natives of 
