From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

Across the Kevir

We must now resume the journey to India. You will remember (see p. 33) that after arriving at Teheran from Trebizond I made up a caravan consisting of six Persians, one Tatar, and fourteen camels. On January 1 everything is ready. The camels are all laden; thick rugs cover their backs to prevent them being rubbed sore by the loads, and the humps stick up through two round holes in the cloths in order that they may not be crushed and injured.

The largest camels go first. Each has its head adorned with a red embroidered headstall, studded with shining plates of metal and red and yellow pompons, and a plume waves above its forehead. Round the chest is a row of brass sleigh-bells, and one large bell hangs round the neck. Two of these bells are like small church bells; they are so big that the camels would knock their knees against them if they were hung in the usual way, so they are fastened instead to the outer sides of a couple of boxes on the top of the loads. The camels are proud of being decked so finely; they are conscious of their own importance, and stalk with majestic, measured strides through the southern gate of Teheran.

PLATE V. THE AUTHOR'S RIDING CAMEL, WITH GULAM HUSSEIN.

My riding camel is the largest in the caravan (Plate V.). He has thick brown wool, unusually long and plentiful on his neck and chest. His loads form a small platform between the humps and along his flanks, with a hollow in the middle, where I sit as in an armchair, with a leg on each side of the front hump. From there I can spy out the land, and with the help of a compass put down on my map everything I see—hills, sandy zones, and large ravines. Camels put out the two left legs at the same time, and then the two right legs. Their gait is therefore rolling, and the rider sits as in a small boat pitching and tossing in a broken sea. Some people become sea-sick from sitting all day bobbing between the humps, but one soon becomes accustomed to the motion. When the animal is standing up it is, of course, impossible to mount on his back without a ladder, so he has to lie down to let me get on him. But sometimes it happens that he is in too great a hurry to rise before I am settled in my place, and then I am flung back on to my head, for he lifts himself as quickly as a steel spring, first with the hind legs and then with the fore. But when I am up I am quite at home. Sometimes, on the march, the camel turns his long neck and lays his shaggy head on my knee. I pat his nose and stroke him over the eyes. It is impossible to be other than good friends with an animal which carries you ten hours a day for several months. In the morning he comes up to my tent, pushes his nose under the door-flap, and thrusts his shaggy head into the tent, which is not large, and is almost filled up when he comes on a visit. After he has been given a piece of bread he backs out again and goes away to graze.

The ring of bells is continually in my ears. The large bells beat in time with the steps of the camels. Their strides are long and slow, and a caravan seldom travels more than twenty miles in a day.

Our road runs south-eastwards. We have soon left behind us the districts at the foot of the Elburz Mountains, where irrigation canals from rivers are able to produce beautiful gardens and fruitful fields. The farther we proceed the smaller and more scattered are the villages. Only along their canals is the soil clothed with verdure, and we have scarcely left a village before we are out on the greyish-yellow desert, where withered steppe shrubs stand at wide intervals apart. Less and less frequently do we meet trains of asses bound for Teheran with great bundles of shrubs and bushes from the steppe to be used as fuel. The animals are small and miserable, and are nearly hidden by their loads. Their nostrils are cruelly pierced, so that they may be made to go quicker and keep up longer. They look sleepy and dejected, these small, obstinate donkeys which never move out of the way. Their long ears flap backwards and forwards, and their under-lips hang down like bags.

At the very last village on the edge of the desert we stay two days to prepare ourselves for the dangers ahead of us. The headman of the village owns ten camels, which he will gladly hire us for a few days; they are to carry trusses of straw and water in leathern bags. Our own camels are already fully laden, and the hired camels are only to give us a start. When they turn back we shall have to shift for ourselves.