The camel is an excellent traveller, but his gait is rough and awkward, and almost insupportable by those who have not been long habituated to it. In this relation we may borrow an anecdote from Madame Hommaire de Hell:[26] Her dragoman, a Frenchman, named Antoine, curious to essay this new species of equestrian practice, begged a Kalmuck in the escort to lend him his camel. The request being readily granted, he perched himself on the extremity of the saddle, in “measureless contentment” with his lofty post, and by no means mindful of the malicious smiles exchanged between the Cossacks and the camel-drivers. Scarcely had the beast advanced four paces, however, before his face turned pale, and he clung to the saddle, with a most pitiful countenance, and imploring help in the most agonizing tones. “One need be a Kalmuck,” says Madame de Hell, “to be capable of enduring the trot of a camel. His jerky gait shakes the body so severely, that a long journey is a positive punishment, even for the Cossacks. The unfortunate Antonio, left some distance behind by the escort, made a vain effort to overtake us; he was compelled, willy-nilly, to retain his steed as far as the Caspian Sea, where he arrived about two hours after ourselves. I have never seen a man more demoralized. His groans, when he was lifted off the camel, were so lamentable, that we really hardly knew what to think of his condition.”
As for the camel’s moral qualities, the same lively writer furnishes a very different estimate to what we gather from the majority of travellers. She represents him as idle, pettish, and very vindictive.
“All that we had read,” says she, “of the rapidity of these ships of the desert; their insensibility to fatigue, to hunger, to thirst; their tractability to the will of man exceeding the obedience of the leaf to the wind, was completely contradicted by the conduct of these quadrupeds, little careful to maintain their reputation for agility. Despite of a stout cord passed through one of the nostrils, and which caused them a sharp pain every time they became refractory, they would not march more than two successive hours without flinging themselves on the ground. We had to battle with them incessantly to rouse them from their torpor, and prevent them from biting one another. Whenever a camel-driver pulled a little roughly his animal’s guiding-string, we heard a succession of cries, all the more frightful from their resemblance to the human voice. In a word, these camels behaved so ill during their short journey, that we entirely lost the good opinion our great naturalist (Buffon) had given us of their species, in descriptions more poetical than true.”
Notwithstanding Antoine’s discouraging experience of camel-riding, Madame de Hell, a few days afterwards, essayed the same experiment, with the result that, like her poor dragoman, she made a vow never to repeat it. Somewhat later, she had an opportunity of witnessing a very curious illustration—and one very amusing to the lookers-on—of the natural vindictiveness of these rough steeds. We give the adventure in her own words:—
“Everybody knows that the camel possesses the faculty of ruminating the food already stored in one of his stomachs, and that he willingly enough grants himself this pleasure when he has nothing to eat; but it is not generally known, perhaps, that he possesses sufficient malice to make, when an opportunity arises, this prerogative a means of vengeance.
“I had noticed in the morning that one of our camel-drivers appeared on bad terms with his beast. He vainly tried to master him by punishment, pulling with all his might the cord which passed through the animal’s nostril; the latter was obstinate, and threw himself every moment on the ground, a proof of rebellion. The Kalmuck, irritated by the struggle, profited by a halt to dismount, and inflict severe chastisement on the recalcitrant; but the camel, disdainfully raising his long neck, followed with so malicious an eye all his tyrant’s movements, that without doubt he was revolving some project of revenge in his head. And so it happened that he quietly waited until the Kalmuck stood opposite to him; then, opening his great mouth, he ejected full in the camel-driver’s face a double volley of masticated herbs, mixed with slaver and all sorts of filthiness. It would be impossible to describe the air of satisfied vengeance with which the camel raised his neck, and moved his head from one side to another, as if in quest of applause. What astonished me most in this affair was his master’s moderation after undergoing such an outrage. He wiped himself coolly, remounted his saddle, and caressed the neck of the ill-bred animal, as if he had received the most flattering compliment. A good understanding being thus strangely re-established, they went on their way peaceably, without giving another thought to what had taken place.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE ANIMAL LIFE OF THE STEPPES:—WILD RUMINATING ANIMALS—RODENTS—CARNIVORA—BIRDS.
BESIDES those species of which we have just spoken, and which man has subjugated to his service, the Steppes nourish a host of other animals which seem for ever destined to a savage life. Some are spread through the entire zone of the Steppes, and include representatives of the genera or species belonging to the temperate latitudes of Europe. But most of them are circumscribed in more or less limited habitats, out of which they would not meet with the conditions of climate or provision that are essential to their existence.
The mammalia which are found in the plains of Eastern Europe and Central Asia belong principally to the orders of Ruminants,[27] Rodents, and Carnaria.