IN ROYAL STATEIN ROYAL STATE
It is not, however, trials of this kind that make the English transport officer, struggling across creation with mules, oxen, and elephants, gray before his time, but the number of reports and dockets he has to write. That dead elephant's tusks were a congenial subject to Commissariat clerks, and they "had the honour to inquire" in many letters.
We have turned from the elephant as he appears to the Oriental, to the creature as he really is, and it may be interesting to hear the account of him that the paternal Government of India has to give. For that Government is itself elephantine in its nature, capable of supporting great weights, but prone also to busy itself in infinite details with restless and inquisitive trunk. The proper treatment of the animal in health and disease is set forth in a manual by the late Mr. Steel, a high veterinary authority, while the Commissariat and other departments concerned with the large property of the State in elephants are carefully instructed in their management. It is officially stated that—"all who have had to deal with elephants agree that their good qualities cannot be exaggerated; that their vices are few and only occur in exceptional animals; that they are neither treacherous nor retentive of injury; and that they are obedient, gentle, and patient beyond measure." This is higher and more sympathetic praise than is usually tied up in the pink tape of Secretariats, and it is all true. The next sentence, however, of theofficial characterisation declares that in many things the elephant is "a decidedly stupid animal!" It was ever hard to find wit and virtue combined, but it may be doubted whether the sentence is quite just. Intelligence among animals is a matter of delicate and difficult comparison. Simplicity of character were a better word than stupidity. A stupid creature refuses to learn and to obey. The elephant under sympathetic treatment always tries to obey, and can be taught to perform acts foreign to all we know of its nature. This entitles it to a higher place on the strictly limited scale of animal intelligence than the word "stupid" indicates. Its inquisitiveness is confined to objects within elephant range, and its sympathies, like those of all purely vegetarian animals which have to spend a large proportion of their time in eating, are narrow. Of a dog, on the other hand, it was once delightfully remarked in the American tongue, "Don't say that before Snap. Snap don't know he's only a dog; he thinks he's folks!" No mahout would begin to think of his placid self-contained charge along this line. They all seem to regard elephant character as a thing apart, and with a respect which a stupid animal could not command,—even from mahouts.
As to the strength of the beast and the best way of turning it to account, there is less room for controversy. On a march, weight-carrying is the work an elephant can best perform, for though he can pull strenuously and well, his frame is not suited for long spells of draught work. His chest is relatively small and weak; so sometimes he is made to pull with ropes tied to the tusks, and sometimes from his waist, if an elephant can be said to have a waist—but the mighty forehead would, to an amateur, appear to be the best hitching point.
The normal load for continuous travel of a fair-sized elephant is 800 pounds, so the animal is equal to eight ponies, small mules, or asses; to five stout pack-mules or bullocks, and to three and one-third of a camel. Under such a load the elephant travels at a fair speed, keeping well up with an ordinary army or baggage train, requiring no made road, few guards, and occupying less depth in column than other animals. He is invaluable in jungle country and all roadless regions where heavy loads are to be moved. In Burmah and on the east and south-east frontier elephants are absolutely necessary for military supply. When once a good road is made, the beast is, of course, easily beaten by wheeled carriage.
He shines most as a special Providence when the cattle of a baggage train or the horses of a battery are stalled in a bog or struggling helplessly at a steep place. An elephant's tusks and trunk serve at once as lever, screw-jack, dog-hooks, and crane, quickly setting overturned carts and gun-carriages right, lifting them by main force or dragging them in narrow winding defiles where a long team cannot act; while his head, protected by a pad, is a ram of immense force and superior handiness.
I write "he" mechanically, but it ought to be said that in consequence of the liability of the male to occasional fits of ill-temper from functional causes, it has been decreed that only females are to enter Government service, and they should not be less than twenty or more than thirty years of age, capable of carrying 1200 pounds for a first-class elephant (eight feet high and over) and 960 pounds for a second-class animal (under eight feet in height), exclusive of gear. No recruit under seven feet should be admitted. Maleanimals are preferred by Native Princes on account of their larger size and prouder bearing, and among about two thousand elephants owned by the British Government a few males are kept for State and parade purposes. An elephant at twenty-five years of age may be compared to a human being of eighteen. He attains his full strength and vigour at about thirty-five, and has been known to live a hundred and twenty years.
ELEPHANT PILING TIMBER (BURMAH)ELEPHANT PILING TIMBER (BURMAH)
A born forester, it is in jungle-work that the labouring elephant outside Government service is seen at his best. The tea-planters of Assam and Ceylon find him useful in forest clearing and as a pack animal. Theyeven yoke him to the plough. He is the leading hand in the teak trade of Burmah,—unrivalled in the heavy toil of the timber-yard, where he piles logs with wonderful neatness and quickness. Small timbers are carried on the tusks, clipped over and held fast by the trunk. A log with a thick butt is seized with judicious appreciation of balance, while long and heavy baulks are levered and pushed into place.
ELEPHANT LIFTING TEAK LOGS (BURMAH)ELEPHANT LIFTING TEAK LOGS (BURMAH)
As to its keep, the elephant is a chargeable beast; costing from £4 to £8 a month when rations of rice or wheaten flour cakes are given, as they should be, with fodder-stalks and leaves of various kinds. Rum, brandy, or arrack, mixed with ginger, cloves, pepper, and treacle, and made into a paste with flour, providethe elephant with a sort of tipsy-cake that cheers and comforts him when suffering from fatigue or cold. In the matter of food and stimulants, however, mahouts have no conscience, and steal without a qualm. Ages of slack-handed usage have settled that the servant of the elephant and three generations of his family shall live on the beast he is paid to cherish. Allowances are given for flour, fire-wood, oil, and spices, but the elephant only gets a share in them, and not always that. So the worst ailment he has to face is semi-starvation, the lot of most elephants in captivity. The beast is in truth a noble anachronism, belonging to a young world time of denser foliage than this dried-up age which packs hay in trusses and treasures ensilage in pits. But the thievish mahout is responsible for the worst of his belly-pinch. Yet elephant men are usually spoken of as models of devotion to their beasts. "They love 'em, sir," said an English officer to me once. But that does not prevent their showing an indifference to their comfort, characteristic of all Orientals, whose talk often drips with sentiment, while their practice is of dry brutality. The acknowledged authorities on the subject, Mr. Sanderson and the late Mr. J. H. Steel, agree that mahouts invariably make the animals' comfort subservient to their own. Even the best of them will seldom take the trouble to put their beasts under the shadow of a tree at mid-day. They also have the cruel Indian trick of securing the animals fore and aft in the most irksome manner possible. A rope or chain fastened to one foot and to a peg in the ground is sufficient restraint for most elephants, and allows them to turn to and from the sun and wind as they find agreeable. Mahouts think nothing of securing an animal so that one side is exposed day and night to wind or rain.The practice of tight tying up is particularly repugnant to those who have a sympathetic knowledge of the restless, swaying, Johnsonian habit rooted in the beast's nature. The native servant himself keenly appreciates his liberty and is the most elusive creature alive, perpetually slinking from his duty into the jungles of the bazar. But when he ruleth he is a terrible despot.
Outside India it is believed that elephants are dying out of the land. The example of America, where the men and creatures natural to the soil have been exterminated to make room for a too triumphant civilisation, has taught the world a lesson of anxiety. But animal lovers may rest content, for the elephants of India, like the people, are increasing in numbers. They are carefully protected in their natural haunts, whence English officers of experience draw supplies for use with as much system and regularity as sheep are drafted from the hillside flock. The details of the Government kheddah or capturing arrangements are full of interest,—sport in its finest sense; nor is it easy to say whether the skill in woodcraft of the English directors, or the courage, endurance, and patience of the natives employed, are most admirable. Like a strong ass between two burdens, the British Government has been beaten with many staves, and also with fools' truncheons of pantomime paper, but, at least, it has tried to husband the resources of the country.
The thoughtful Germans are said to meditate the re-capture and domestication in their new Equatorial realm of the African elephant, free since the days of Hannibal. It is to be hoped this is true, for there is naught sillier under the sun than the slaughter which has hitherto been all that civilisation had to bestow on these blameless Ethiopians.
"When spring-time flushes the desert grass,Our Kafilas wind through the Khyber pass.Lean are the camels but fat the frails,Light are the purses but heavy the bales,As the snow-bound trade of the North comes downTo the market-square of Peshawar town."In a turquoise twilight crisp and chill,A Kafila camped at the foot of the hill.Then blue smoke haze of the cooking rose,And tent-peg answered to hammer nose;And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;And the bubbling camels beside the loadSprawled for a furlong adown the road;And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."
"When spring-time flushes the desert grass,Our Kafilas wind through the Khyber pass.Lean are the camels but fat the frails,Light are the purses but heavy the bales,As the snow-bound trade of the North comes downTo the market-square of Peshawar town.
"In a turquoise twilight crisp and chill,A Kafila camped at the foot of the hill.Then blue smoke haze of the cooking rose,And tent-peg answered to hammer nose;And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;And the bubbling camels beside the loadSprawled for a furlong adown the road;And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."
The ballad of the King's jest.—R. K.
hile some mahouts hint vaguely that the elephant came to India from the farther East, it is an accepted belief that the camel came from the West,i.e.from Arabia. No account is taken of the herds of wild camels seen on the high table-lands of Central Asia. So the saying has it, "The camel let loose, goes westward," or "The camel is agood Mussulman, for when free, he runs towards Mecca." In default of proof that the beast really follows the setting sun, it may be suspected that Oriental fancy, always strong, has more play than Oriental observation, which is often weak. For the camel is a peculiarly Muhammadan creature both in his life of to-day and in his wonderful origin. It was on his back that the body of Shah Ali Shah was laid after death, and he was sent into the wilderness till the Angel Gabriel met him and, taking the rope, led him no man knows whither. Before that ghostly funeral the camel resembled a horse, but the Angel gave him a hump like the mountain into which he disappeared, and feet to spread on the yielding sand, with other anatomical peculiarities, all duly enumerated by good Mussulmans. This story is also told of Moses, the friend of God, or the converser with God, the place of whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. Probably the saying has its origin in the propensity of the stupid camel to stray and lose itself, for it has none of the "homing" faculty so strongly developed in the horse. People who religiously face westward several times a day to pray naturally get an occidental twist in their minds. Nay, there are those who maintain that all the world has this trick, and that, like Wordsworth's friends, we still go "stepping westward." South Australia has not yet discovered a Mecca twist in the thousands of camels it now owns.
The Prophet himself was a camel driver orSerwán, and always cherished the liking of a true Arab for the beast of which he said, "Speak ill neither of the camel nor of the wind; the camel is a benefit to man and the wind is an emanation of the Spirit of God." When he was married to Kadijah, two young camels were slain for the wedding feast.
But Indian popular observation lacks the Arab keenness, nor is the beast so important and highly thought of as in Arabia. There is no strong insight in calling the long shafts of the camel's limbs crooked, as in the angry saying to a shifty ne'er-do-well, "O camel, hast thouonestraight bone in thy body?" The pride of a big man is rebuked by the saying, "The camel thought he was the biggest thing in the world till he came under the mountain." Of a very tall man who, in India, is often a simpleton, they say, "Tall as a camel, but silly as an ass," and of an unwilling, grumbling servant, "He snarls like a camel when you load him." The bite of a camel is very severe and sometimes poisonous, so the saying goes, "God preserve us from the nip of a camel and the snap of a dog." Of a notoriously unlucky man they say, "Even if he were perched on a camel a dog would jump up and bite him." The Kirgiz have a pious expansion of this saying: "Whom the fates bless with a good son may light a bonfire; but the father cursed with a bad son will be devoured by dogs, though he be mounted on the back of a camel." We express the completeness of ill-luck by saying, "The bread never falls but on its buttered side." The Kirgiz say, "One never falls but from anár"—the large-sized Bokhariot camel. A common saying similar to our "waiting to see which way the cat jumps" is based on a trivial story. A potter and a greengrocer hired a camel between them. The camel reached round with his long neck and ate some of the cabbages on the greengrocer's side, whereupon the potter jeered. "Wait and see which side he sits down upon," said the greengrocer. The camel sat down on the potter's side and smashed his wares. Æsop's frog tried to swell himself as big as the ox,but in India they say of pretentious little people, "When the camels were branded, the frog also held up his leg," as who should say, "brand me too." "The goat-keeper went to buy a camel and wanted to feel its ears" (a point of handling which no judicious goat-buyer omits) is a saying which has several applications in India; but in Britain also we may see critics a-tiptoe, reaching up with tiny and inapt canons of judgment to things they do not understand.
The decorative value of the camel cannot be appreciated by those who have only seen one or two at a time. He was made for a sequence, as beads are made for stringing. On an Indian horizon a long drove of camels, tied head to tail, adorns the landscape with a festooned frieze of wonderful symmetry and picturesqueness. Five hundred camels go to a mile.[3]If I had a very long and lofty hall to decorate I should pray the architect to let me loop it round with camels, with here and there a Biloch driver, as the frieze turned a corner or was interrupted by a bracket or girder. For a quaint and almost comic spectacle, a bivouac of a camel Kafila or caravan on the march is not easily surpassed. The beasts are seated four or five on each side of a sheet or table-cloth on which their fodder is placed. Camels are as symmetrically constructed as gun-carriages, and their hind-legs fold up like two-foot-rules. They rest in great part on a pedestal behind the chest with which Nature has furnished them, and sit close together in high-elbowed state with an indescribable air of primness and propriety. With, as often happens, a driver supping at each end of this table in the wilderness, the whole arrangement has an absurdly formal and well-regulated air, suggesting a tea-party of elderly maiden ladies, as the long necks curve and bridle and the mincing mouths move busily.
[3]This is the present official estimate, allowing a little over 10 feet 6 inches per camel. Sir Charles Napier, however, writing of his first day's march from Rori to Imaín Ghur in the Sindh desert, allows 15 feet to each animal: "Oh! the baggage! the baggage! it is enough to drive one mad. We have 1500 camels with their confounded long necks, each occupying 15 feet! Fancy these long devils in a defile; four miles and a quarter of them!"
[3]This is the present official estimate, allowing a little over 10 feet 6 inches per camel. Sir Charles Napier, however, writing of his first day's march from Rori to Imaín Ghur in the Sindh desert, allows 15 feet to each animal: "Oh! the baggage! the baggage! it is enough to drive one mad. We have 1500 camels with their confounded long necks, each occupying 15 feet! Fancy these long devils in a defile; four miles and a quarter of them!"
The deliberate movement of the beasts under their burdens is impressive and not without a touch of scornful majesty. Only an Oriental, one would think, could accommodate himself to that unhasting cadence of step. Perhaps the reported existence of wild camels in Arizona territory is a fabulous or jocular illustration of American character. It is said they were imported into the United States to serve as pack animals, but nobody foresaw that the nervous, electric American was the last man alive to pace placidly at the end of a camel's nose-rope. He naturally dropped it in disgust;—and now there are wild camels in Arizona. If this story is not true, it ought to be.
IN A SERAI (REST-HOUSE)IN A SERAI (REST-HOUSE)
The truth about the camel's character has often been debated. He is wonderful, and, in his own way,beautiful to look at, and his patience, strength, speed, and endurance are beyond all praise. The camel-riders of Rajputana and Central India, mounted on animals of a swift breed, cover almost incredible distances at high speed, finding it necessary to protect themselves against the racking motion by broad leathern belts tightly buckled, which are often covered with velvet and prettily broidered in silk. Even they, who know the beast at his best, never pretend to like their mounts, as one likes a horse. So useful a beast is estimable, but the most indulgent observation fails to find a ground for affection. Europeans, at all events, who have to do with camels seem to think it were as easy to lavish one's love on a luggage van. He is a morose, discontented, grumbling brute, a servant of man, it is true, as is the water that turns a mill-wheel, the fire that boils a kettle, or the steam that stirs the piston of a cylinder. He does not come to a call like other beasts, but has to be fetched and driven from browsing. There are but few words made for his private ear such as belong to horses, dogs, and oxen. An elephant has a separate word of command for sitting down with front legs, with hind legs, or with all together, and he moves at a word. A camel has but one, and that must be underlined with a tug at his nose-rope ere he will stoop. But he has a largeshare in that great public property of curses whose loss would enrich the world.
RAJPUT CAMEL-RIDER'S BELTRAJPUT CAMEL-RIDER'S BELT
The camel has so little sense, one wonders he is credited with malevolence, but so it is, and there is sound appreciation of his vindictiveness in a phrase in use for bearing malice, equivalent to "camel-tempered," and of his aimless wandering in another addressed to an idle man, "Why are you loafing round like a loose camel?"
"Camel colour" is a common word among weavers, embroiderers, and the like; but it is not a good colour name, because camels vary much in tint. Other names of this end of the colour scale are better, as "badámi" or almond; "mouse colour";khâki, orkhara, catechu tinted. An ostrich is a camel-bird, and so says Western science,—struthio camelus,—and a giraffe a camel-cow; no notice apparently being taken of the creature's spots.
The camel's grumble has led the British soldier to christen him "a humming-bird." "Commissariat scent-bottle" has also been heard, and when in camp with camels, you see more in these schoolboy absurdities than would strike a stranger. The relations of the British soldier with the camel, however, have been so vividly and truly put in my son's barrack-room ballad, "Oonts!" (camels), that I make no apology for quoting it at length,—premising that Mr. Thomas Atkins, who takes his own way with Oriental languages, invariably shortens long vowels, and makesoontrhyme with grunt.
OONTS!
(NORTHERN INDIA TRANSPORT TRAIN)
What makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, what makes 'im to perspire?It isn't standin' up to charge or lyin' down to fire;But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' roadFor the commissariat camel and 'is commissariat load.O the oont, O the oont, O the commissariat oont!With 'is silly neck a bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes,We packs 'im like a idol, an' you ought to hear 'im grunt,An' when we gets 'im loaded up, 'is blesséd girth-rope breaks.What makes the rearguard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in,An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?It ain't the chance o' bein' rushed by Paythans from the 'ills,It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is blesséd frills.O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy, scary oont!A trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm,We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front,And when we've saved 'is bloomin' life, he chaws our bloomin' arm.The 'orse 'e knows above a bit, the bullock's but a fool,The elephant's a gentleman, the baggage mule's a mule;But the commissariat cam-u-el, when all is said and done,'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan child in one.O the oont, O the oont, O the Gawd forsaken oont!The 'umpy lumpy 'ummin'-bird a singin' where 'e lies,'E's blocked the 'ole division from the rearguard to the front,An' when we gets 'im up again—the beggar goes an' dies!'E'll gall an' chafe an' lame an' fight—'e smells most awful vile,'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile;'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through,And when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two.O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin' droppin' oont!When 'is long legs gives from under, an' 'is meltin' eye is dim,The tribes is up be'ind us an' the tribes is out in front,It ain't no jam for Tommy, but it's kites and crows for 'im.So when the cruel march is done, an' when the roads is blind,An' when we sees the camp in front an' 'ears the shots be'ind,O then we strips 'is saddle off, an' all 'is woes is past:'E thinks on us that used 'im so, an' gets revenge at last!O the oont, O the oont, O the floatin' bloatin' oont!The late lamented camel in the water-cut he lies.We keeps a mile be'ind 'im an' we keeps a mile in front,But 'e gets into the drinkin' casks, an' then, of course, we dies.
What makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, what makes 'im to perspire?It isn't standin' up to charge or lyin' down to fire;But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' roadFor the commissariat camel and 'is commissariat load.O the oont, O the oont, O the commissariat oont!With 'is silly neck a bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes,We packs 'im like a idol, an' you ought to hear 'im grunt,An' when we gets 'im loaded up, 'is blesséd girth-rope breaks.
What makes the rearguard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in,An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?It ain't the chance o' bein' rushed by Paythans from the 'ills,It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is blesséd frills.O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy, scary oont!A trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm,We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front,And when we've saved 'is bloomin' life, he chaws our bloomin' arm.
The 'orse 'e knows above a bit, the bullock's but a fool,The elephant's a gentleman, the baggage mule's a mule;But the commissariat cam-u-el, when all is said and done,'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan child in one.O the oont, O the oont, O the Gawd forsaken oont!The 'umpy lumpy 'ummin'-bird a singin' where 'e lies,'E's blocked the 'ole division from the rearguard to the front,An' when we gets 'im up again—the beggar goes an' dies!
'E'll gall an' chafe an' lame an' fight—'e smells most awful vile,'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile;'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through,And when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two.O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin' droppin' oont!When 'is long legs gives from under, an' 'is meltin' eye is dim,The tribes is up be'ind us an' the tribes is out in front,It ain't no jam for Tommy, but it's kites and crows for 'im.
So when the cruel march is done, an' when the roads is blind,An' when we sees the camp in front an' 'ears the shots be'ind,O then we strips 'is saddle off, an' all 'is woes is past:'E thinks on us that used 'im so, an' gets revenge at last!O the oont, O the oont, O the floatin' bloatin' oont!The late lamented camel in the water-cut he lies.We keeps a mile be'ind 'im an' we keeps a mile in front,But 'e gets into the drinkin' casks, an' then, of course, we dies.
Through the humorous lilt of these lines you may perceive many facts, especially the mortality among camels in our Afghan campaigns. In that of 1878-1879, about 50,000 camels were paid for by the British Government. But this was in no wise the fault of the brutal Briton, for the beasts were deliberately sacrificed by their native owners, who were guaranteed compensation for their loss. It was easier to allow the camel to die than to toil after him over a difficult country. It is now laid down as an axiom of the Transport service that animals required to proceed beyond the bases, and to act with troops in the field, should be the property of the Government, while the transport of supplies within the bases should be mainly hired. But on the next pinch the chances are that the axiom will be disregarded. A history of the military services of the camel would be the history of Eastern wars. He has served and served well both as baggage cart and troop-horse, and whether from stupidity or courage is as stolid and unmoved under attack as were the British infantry squares at Waterloo. Herodotus, Pliny, Livy, Diodorus, and Xenophon are quoted by Major Burn of the Intelligence Branch in his excellent official manual on Transport and Camel Corps. In modern campaigns camel corps were organised by Napoleon in Egypt, Sir Charles Napier in Sindh, by Carbuccia in Algeria, and during the Indian Mutiny the "Ninety-twa" Highlanders had a camel corps of 150 native drivers, and 155 well-bred camels on which sat 150 kilted Highlanders. Sir Charles Napier's Sindh camel corps seems to have been the most complete in design and equipment, and in every way worthy of that great soldier's genius. The principle on which it was based is the plainest of all the plain truths ignored by our system—that the transportis the most vital part of military matters, and should be organised with just as much care as a regiment. In an expedition for the capture of a robber chief in Sindh, Sir Charles Napier's camel corps travelled 70 miles during the night, captured the thief, and returned, thus accomplishing 140 miles in twenty-four hours. Feats of this kind, of course, were not continuous, and their bringing-off was due to the care with which the rest and upkeep of the animals were maintained. This splendid property organised in 1845 was allowed to die down, and no such efficient organisation existed in subsequent campaigns, where money, hastily spilled like water, purchased discomfort and sickness for the troops, and that tardy and confused movement of his masses which breaks the heart of an anxious general.
As a rule, the management of camels should be left to Orientals, though the French say their men learned to imitate the Arab camel cries. Our Thomas Atkins is a poor ventriloquist, ill at outland tongues. Like his officers, too, he cherishes the ancient illusion, filtered down from book to book, about the extra water-tank stomach of the camel, and his power of going without water. As a plain physiological fact, the camel has no such chamber, his digestive arrangements are like those of the ox, but simpler, approaching the horse character; and, if he goes without water, it is only because he cannot get it. There are pouches in his stomach, which frequently after death are found to contain fluid; but that they are reservoirs pure and simple is doubtful, says Mr. J. H. Steel in hisManual of the Camel. "It is very certain that the parched traveller who cuts open his dying camel to obtain its water store will thus procure only a very little fluid ofa temperature of about 90° Fahr., of a mawkish, sub-acid flavour and an unpleasant odour." He should be watered twice a day in the hot weather, and once in the cool season. It is true, of course, that he has been known to go dry for seven or eight days, but it was labour and sorrow to him. Also, although he can travel twenty miles a day, carrying 360 lbs. weight, he is capable of fatigue as other beasts are, and once out of condition does not regain his strength in less than six months. And in spite of his unfriendly and unsympathetic disposition, it is a fact that, like the rest of God's creatures, he is more tractable under kind treatment that when bullied and roughly handled. Of a man we sometimes say "he has an unfortunate manner," nor do we always mean it, for such a manner often shows the aggressive selfishness and ill-temper that command fortune and respect. The supercilious expression framed in the camel's lips, which disclose with savage threat the long upper teeth, denied by nature to other ruminants, and his curiously indifferent air, are real misfortunes to him. We bow respectfully to the camel-tempered man of private life, but it is hard to be civil to a beast whose face is a sculptured sneer.
The long-shanked, cushion-footed creature is especially good at fording rivers where the bottom is sandy. A drove going across will sometimes make a ford practicable for horses, acting like a roller on a loose road, but a few yards of greasy clay will throw many a camel. A fair slope is not much of an obstacle, but a steep hill of slippery wet clay, up which a mule goes gaily, is a sad business for the camel. Nature has made his shoulder, chest, and fore-legs strong, but the attachments of the hind limbs are weak and ill-considered. So the beast is liable todislocations of the hip in climbing, or, as the British soldier says, "he splits 'isself up." Some Afghan short-legged breeds are good climbers, but of most the Arab saying holds good: "Which is best for you, O camel, to go up hill or down? May God's curse rest on both wherever met, quoth the camel." None the less, at this moment long strings are pacing with heavy burdens up and down the hill roads to Kashmir, Simla, and Kábul.
RAJPUT CAMEL GUNSRAJPUT CAMEL GUNS
Camels, like mules, can be used to carry field-pieces, the equipment of a gun being divided among three animals. The indigenous practice was to make the beast himself a gun-carriage, bearing a Zambūrah (wasp), a piece like our old falconet or like the heavy swivel muskets sometimes seen in English armouries,intended for the tops of a ship or the stern sheets of a boat. The saddle also carries a rider who holds the heavy wooden stock and fires the gun with a slow match. The lingering nature of this arrangement must in action have lent a lively interest to the evolutions of a gun camel, for there is always the chance that just at the critical moment the beast may sling round and point the gun at its friends. Another camel gun is a sort ofmitrailleuse, carrying twenty-one barrels in a framework of iron-clamped wood. Both these contrivances are still in as much use as the brooding pax Britannica allows in Rajputana, especially at Oodeypore and Jeypore, and make a great figure in State processions when salutes are fired. The Sikhs had a great number of camel guns of the Zambūrah type, and at the battle of Sobraon it is said that over 2000 were captured. Some of these still survive in the armoury at Fort Lahore.
Besides his services as a slow-pacing pack animal and as a steed capable of covering long distances at a high speed, the camel has many uses unnoticed by Europeans. He is blindfolded in Sindh and made to go a mill-round, grinding flour or oil seeds; working sometimes in such a confined space, one wonders how they got the huge beast in, or how they will get him out again. He takes the place of the ox at the plough and the well, and acts as water-carrier in parts of Rajputana, on the edges of the Indian desert and in the camel districts of the Punjab. On the Grand Trunk road to Delhi are wonderful double-storied wagons drawn by camels. These old-world contrivances go at the rate of about three miles per hour, and are like nothing so much as the cage wagons of travelling menageries. They are in effect iron cagesintended originally as a protection against robbery. The passengers are huddled together and seem to sleep most of the time, and, to do him justice, so does the driver. The most picturesque "property" of the Punjab Government house is a hugechar à banc, to which is harnessed a team of four or six fine camels with leopard skin housings and gaily attired riders. The camel van will probably be run off the road by the railway, but modified versions of it must for long survive in the desert regions off the line of rail.
It ought to be unnecessary to say that while one camel is like another to an untrained European eye, there are in India, as in Arabia, carefully classified breeds, though they are not distinctively branded with caste marks, as is the case in the West. One listens to this lore with respect, but it is not easily remembered, nor is it of much importance, save to the camel owner or the Government officer sent forth at tuck of drum to buy or hire all the good camels he can lay hands on. By common consent the very best of the animals of the plain are considered to be those of Bikanir and Jessulmir, Rajput States on the edge of the great Indian desert, where the hot dry air suits the austere Arab constitution of the beast. But it has a wider range of variety than is generally thought, each suited to itshabitat, until in the hills the slender, high-caste form becomes square, sturdy, and thickly covered with a coarse, cold-resisting pelage. The two-humped Bactrian camel is prepared by nature to withstand a cold almost as keen and piercing as that the reindeer feels, and yet will breed with the one-humped camel of the burning plain. Signor Lombardini, an authority on cameline anatomy, finds a rudimentary second hump in the ordinary one-humped camel.
After the he-goat, a whole camel seems a large offering for the most pious person to make, but he still occasionally serves as a sacrifice. Colonel Tod wrote that the Great Mogul used to slay a camel with his own hand on the new year festival, and the flesh was eaten by the court favourites. He is certainly eaten, and they say camel in good condition much resembles beef. After his death his bones are valuable, being whiter and more dense than most other bones, and a fair substitute for ivory. But they are neglected except by the lac-turners of Dera Ismail Khan, who use them for the studs and ornaments with which they adorn their ware. Possibly some camel bones are picked by English turners and button-makers out of the Indian bones now imported. It may not be generally known that the attention of traders has been recently drawn to the cattle remains that lie near Indian villages. Each hamlet has its Golgotha, where worn-out animals are left to die. Hitherto, only the vulture, the crow, and the jackal have visited these spots, after the leather-dresser has taken the skin of the last comer. But though it never occurred to the Oriental that they could be of any use, Western science, like the giant in the child's tale, grinds bones to make bread. So the village bone-heaps are swept up and shipped to Europe. Perhaps a day may come when the people, awaking to their value, will cry out that they have been robbed. The bone heaps will certainly be missed by the scientific Indian agriculturists of the future, but there is no way of keeping them in the country. Learned authorities on economic questions say it is a mistake to use customs duties with any beneficent intention, just as literary critics say it is bad art to write a story with a purpose, and both have some right on their side. Otherwise,in the interests of India, one would like to impose a heavy export duty on wild bird skins, feathers, and bones, and a crushing import duty on aniline dyes and Members of Parliament.
THE LEADING CAMEL OF A KAFILA (AFGHANISTAN)THE LEADING CAMEL OF A KAFILA (AFGHANISTAN)
Camel trappings are not so gaudy in India as in Egypt or Morocco, where riding animals are bedizened in scarlet and yellow. They are in a different key of colour, belonging to a school of pastoral ornament in soberly-coloured wools, beads, and small white shells,which appears to begin (or end) in the Balkans and stretches eastward through Central Asia into India, especially among the Biloch and other camel folk on our North-West frontier. Camel housings may be the beginning of the nomad industry of carpet weaving. It is perhaps not too fanciful to trace on the worsted neckband the original unit or starting-point of the carpets and "saddle-bags" which have given lessons to English upholsterers. There is not much room for variety in a narrow fillet with only black, brown, and dingy white as a colour scheme, but you may watch a long Kafila go curtseying past and find no two neck-bands quite alike in the arrangement of zig-zags, diamonds, bars, and squares. These bands, with more richly coloured rugs and saddle-bags, and the homely russet splendours of worsted cords, tassels, shells, and beads, with which the leading camel is adorned, are wrought by women. Like more women's work, it is done at intervals. The English lady complains that her Turkoman or Biloch rug lies unevenly on her parquet floor, and does not reflect that the perverse "buckling" marks the times when camp was shifted to follow the pasturing flocks, and the loom with its unfinished carpet was rolled up to be staked anew with Oriental carelessness as to straightness. "Saddle-bags," said a London tradesman to me, "have had their day, they've got common." This sounded sadly, but they will not cease to be for all that.
"Hev a dog, Miss!—they're better friends nor any Christian."
"Hev a dog, Miss!—they're better friends nor any Christian."
George Eliot,The Mill on the Floss.
A SUBALTERN'S DOG-BOYA SUBALTERN'S DOG-BOY
hat the dog has served for ages throughout the East as a byword of loathing and contempt is of itself no hanging matter so far as the real character of the animal is concerned, and need not surprise or shock the English dog-lover. For, like the sacred writings of the Hindus and Muhammadans, our own Holy Bible, from which we profess to take our rules of life, contains the same low estimate and has no hint of appreciation of canine character, no recognition of his services to man, no word of compassion for his fate. Yet Christians have learned and perfected the lore known to the Assyrian and the Greek of the varieties and qualities of dogs, and, following them rather than the ancient Hebrew, have come to love and cherish the unclean animal. The wonder is that the Oriental has stuck so servilely to the skirts ofhis Scripture and taken so much to heart the belated nonsense that Moslem and Hindu authorities have uttered in disparagement of one of the best of God's creatures. He ought to have found out for himself that the figurative expressions of orators, poets, and law-givers have but a local and temporary significance; but if you look closely you will find that for centuries he has most faithfully tried to take all that he has been officially taughtau pied de la lettre, and has crystallised the metaphors of poetry and the rhetorical flights of law-givers into canons of conduct. The enormous difficulty of this task has, of course, driven both Hindu and Moslem to much hypocrisy and compromise, but on the whole their faith is greater than anything we know of in the West.
The official condemnation of the dog by Muhammadans, and the formal terms in which he is out-casted by Hindus, are too monstrous and sweeping to hold good, when one considers the friendly nature of the beast and the real claim he has on the gratitude of mankind. But there are not many examples of human sympathy passing the narrow bounds of a cruel law. The ingenious Mr. Pope has a much-quoted passage about the poor Indian whose untutored mind leads him to hope that when admitted to the equal sky of heaven his faithful dog may bear him company. But ages before Mr. Pope lisped in numbers, and indeed before America was discovered, Asiatic poetry had created the hero Yudhishtira, who refused to enter heaven at all unless his dog might accompany him. Modern India, however, has for the most part forgotten Yudhishtira, and in these days the only dog admitted to the company of the Gods is a cur that serves as the vehicle orvâhanof Bhairon, now one of the most popular of Hindudivinities. This deity bears a bottle of strong drink, in defiance of those shallow folk who claim all Hindus as total abstainers and Bands of Hope, and a staff which is vulgarly reckoned to be theKotwālor town magistrate of Benares. His semblance is that of a black or dark blue man, whose raiment is a cloth round his loins and a serpent round his neck; his dog is a black tyke of low degree, nor does the canine race appear to gain in popular esteem from his association with the God, unless the very vulgar saying: "If all the dogs go on pilgrimage to Benares, who will be left to lick the dishes clean?" is an obscure reference to his sacred character.
Muhammadans have granted in popular lore a place in Paradise to Khetmir, the dog of the seven sleepers, who has been suspected of being the same animal as Yudhishtira's hound by some scholars. But they follow the Bible in speaking of him in injurious terms as an expression for disgust and loathing, unclean by immemorial prescription. It is written that the angels of God will not cross the threshold of a house whereon there is even a hair of a dog. If a dog is known to have drunk out of a vessel, it must be washed in seven waters. (A Muhammadan cure for hydrophobia is to look down seven wells.) Neither by Hindu nor Muhammadan writer is ever a kindly word said in appreciation of the admirable sides of canine character. When he has a fair chance he is as faithful and zealous in service in India as elsewhere, but no one notices him. "A dog's death" is an Indian as well as a European phrase for a miserable ending, and it has a peculiar force in India; an idle babbler is said to have eaten a dog's brains, a hasty movement is a dog's jump, the hungry stomach is spoken of as a dog that mustbe quieted, and it is an ancient saying that though you imprisoned a dog's tail for a dozen years in a bamboo tube, it would still be crooked. That it would probably be perfectly straight after such a process is an irrelevant physiological detail unworthy the attention of a poet or a proverbial philosopher. "What business has a dog in a mosque?" is a scornful snub to an intrusive person of low degree. The sons-in-law and other relatives of wealthy, high-caste Hindus who, under the patriarchal scheme of domestic life, live with their wives' families, are familiarly described in quite a long series of enumeration as household dogs. A sponger or parasite is atabáqi kūtta, a dish (licking) dog. And the Persian monosyllable for dog, "Săg," is often in a native mouth a more savage term of contempt than "Sūar," pig.
A saying goes, "do not travel in the evening, the Raja and the dog are asleep in the morning"—and in the lawless days but lately past there was sense in the counsel. Of oppressive native subordinates they say: "Why should not a dog bite a defenceless poor man?" To an abusive underling: "Cur! it is not your mouth but your master's that barks." The messenger wears a scarf and brass badge, and is often a jack-in-office, so he is familiarly spoken of as a dog with a collar on. Another saying is based on an incident: "You ate the dawn meal, so you must fast." A Muhammadan during the Ramazān fast found that a dog had eaten the meal which may be lawfully taken before sunrise, and with these words he locked the creature up, and, conceiving himself released from obligation, he breakfasted and dined as usual. We say "Love me, love my dog"; the Oriental admits that if you are devoted heart and soul to a person, you may even take herdog into favour: "Even Leila's dog is dear to Majnūn." This languishing hero is the accepted type of a devoted lover. The dog plays no great part in the story, and I suspect it is in respect of the proverb that a dog is generally introduced by native draughtsmen into the popular bazaar pictures representing these personages. The ordinance in the Code of Menu that certain out-caste tribes should possess no animals but dogs and asses has been a millstone round the necks of these admirable and most useful animals.