Читать книгу The Desert World - Arthur Mangin - Страница 13

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REFERENCE has been made to the numerous troops of wild horse which haunt the Steppes on this side of the Oural. Similar troops of these animals wander over the whole extent of the Steppes of Central Asia, which the most accredited modern naturalists repute to be the original cradle of their race.

The Tarpan, or Wild Horse.

These horses are called tarpans, a word undoubtedly derived from the Tartar. Shall we look upon them as the representatives of the primitive breed, whence have sprung all the varieties known at the present day; or shall we see in them, as well as in the wandering horses of the prairies and pampas of the New World, the descendants of individuals which had escaped from the thraldom of man? This latter hypothesis seems to be the most probable. But there is good ground for believing that, living a wild life, these animals are gradually returning to the primitive type. They have lost the harmonious graces of form, the beauty, and the vigour which we admire in the high-bred steed, perfected by the assiduous care of man. There seems as great a difference between the Arabian horse and the wild horse of the Steppes as between the accomplished European gentleman and a Malagasy savage. They are of small stature; their limbs are lank; their coat is coarse, woolly, rude, and rough. With the tarpans of the northern Steppes it is thick, flaky, and frizzled. Their mouth and nostrils are garnished with long hair, not unlike a goat. Their colour is generally brown, of the shade called Isabelle, after a certain Queen of France who, in fulfilment of a vow, wore her linen unchanged for a considerable period. A few are black or white. They have a large head, with the forehead projecting above the eyes; a straight chamfer; and long ears, customarily laid back close to the head.

The troops of the tarpans are subdivided into groups of twenty to thirty individuals, each group usually living apart, and only uniting in a compact phalanx when a common danger threatens, or a necessity arises of migrating from one region to another. The gaunt grim wolves, which hunger drives from their neighbouring forests; and man, who hunts them hotly, either to reduce them into subjection, or kill them for their flesh, are almost the only enemies they have any reason to dread. The warlike nomade tribes of the Black and Caspian coasts, and of Central Asia, have no other breeding-grounds than the steppe which they inhabit. Thither come Cossack, and Mongol, and Kirghis, and Kalmuck, to choose their chargers. They catch them by means of a lasso, which they throw with surprising dexterity, and in a few days train them into a suitable docility. When in want of their hide or flesh, the nomades hunt them with gun, arrow, or spear; for hippophagy, which a few zealous amateurs are now endeavouring to popularize in France and England, has been practised from time immemorial by the inhabitants of the Steppes.

WILD HORSES TERRIFIED BY A STORM.

These barbarians, however, respect the life of their domestic animals, or sacrifice them only in cases of pressing need. They treat them also with a gentleness unknown to our European grooms and horse-dealers. With them, as with the Arabs, the horse is a friend rather than a slave; he is, in truth, one of the family; and it is with great difficulty that his master consents to part with him. Our travellers describe the Tartar, Mongol, and Kirghiz horsemen as realizing the celebrated fable of the Centaurs,—as becoming, so to speak, one with their horses. The exigencies of their wandering life require that they should be constantly on horseback; it is almost their home, their abode, their dwelling-place; there they are mounted day and night; there they sleep, prepare their food, and take their repasts. True that their cooking is of the rudest and simplest, and their taste not so fastidious as that of an European epicure! If, for example, they would make ready a piece of meat, they insert it between the saddle and the horse’s skin, and in this impromptu oven leave it for a few hours, while it undergoes the processes of heat, pressure, and frequent friction, serving in some degree to cook it; then a pinch of salt for seasoning; and lo! a dainty titbit which our cavalier devours with the best appetite in the world.

But it is to the inhabitants of the Steppes of the Black and Caspian Seas that the horse renders the most estimable services. To make use of a phrase of Buffon’s, “He shares with them the fatigue of war and the glory of battle;” he provides them with the best and swiftest means of transit; he nourishes them with his flesh, and the mare quenches their thirst with her milk. In their dairies mares take the place of our European milch-cows, and are regularly milked once or twice a-day. The milk, warm, is employed as a medicine. It is thicker and more saccharine than that of ruminating animals, and this, undoubtedly, is the reason that the Cossacks, Tartars, and Kalmucks have succeeded, by fermentation, in distilling alcohol from it, and procuring vinegar by acetifying it. They prepare with it an intoxicating liquor (koumis), to which they are very partial, and with which the wealthiest among them consider it an honour to be largely provided.

By the side of the horse, we naturally place his humble congener and compatriot, the Ass.

Nor need we be ashamed to devote a few lines to this useful animal, though civilization has appointed to it a very different lot from that of the horse.

While man has devoted his utmost efforts to ennoble, as it were, and aggrandize the latter, to perfect his capabilities, develop his qualities, embellish and vary his form, for the former he has had nothing but contempt and harsh treatment. He has made the horse the companion of his campaigns, the minister to his sumptuous pleasures, the instrument of his grandest labours. He has dismissed the poor ass to the fields to carry the heaviest burdens, to share in the toil and privation of the peasant. In these different conditions, who will wonder that while the horse has become a strong, graceful, and proud-spirited animal, the ass, on the other hand, remains bowed and bent, with a rough coarse hide, lanky limbs, a heavy head,—always drooping, as if under the weight of continual lassitude and unconquerable melancholy,—and long ungraceful ears, which give his physiognomy an air of ridicule. Everything in him bears the impress of degradation. How has he merited so obscure a destiny? Alas, he is the victim of an iniquitous caprice of man. For see him in his natural condition; contrast with the well-worn servant of civilization the Onagra,[23] the free wild ass of the Steppes, with the Tarpan, and the parallel will be wholly to the advantage of the former. The onagra is at least of the same size; his ears are short; he carries aloft a well-proportioned head; his skin, of a handsome gray or yellowish-brown, is sleek and shining; his limbs are long, delicate, and nervous. He lives in very numerous troops, and migrates from north to south, and south to north, according to the season. The Tartars employ him as a beast of transport and the saddle rather than as a beast of burden. They eat his flesh, preferring it to that of the wild horse. Even the domestic ass of the East differs notably from the slow, dogged, ill-used animal of European notoriety. Under a more favourable climate, and in the free life of the desert, he has preserved his tall stature, his vigour, and the haughtiness of his bearing. The wealthiest and most distinguished personages do not disdain to mount him or harness him to their carriage. He has a keen eye, a quick scent, a sure foot, a mild and resolute aspect. He accomplishes with ease from six to eight miles an hour; and, lastly—a fact worthy of notice—his life, which with us seldom exceeds fifteen years, in Asia is frequently prolonged to thirty or thirty-five. He is less subject to sickness than the horse, and he almost equals the camel in sobriety, docility, and endurance of hunger and fatigue.

Onagra, or Wild Ass.

Whether the Tartars and Kalmucks, who use mares’ milk as a medicine, attribute, as we do, certain therapeutical virtues to the milk of the ass, we are unable to say; but it is certain that this milk forms a portion of their daily food. On account of the strong proportion of saccharine serum which it contains, it is well adapted for the preparation of the fermented drink already spoken of, known to the Tartars under the name of Koumis or Kamuis. Mr. Atkinson speaks of the large leathern koumis sack or bottle, as an important piece of Mongolian furniture. One which he saw was five feet eight inches long, and four feet five inches wide, with a leathern tube at the corner about four inches in diameter, through which the milk is poured into the bag, and the koumis drawn out. A wooden instrument is introduced into this bag, its handle passing through the tube, not unlike a churning staff; with this the koumis is frequently agitated. The Kirghiz begin making it in April, and its due agitation and fermentation occupy about fourteen days.[24]

The horse, and a few flocks of sheep and herds of horned cattle, amply suffice for the wants of the warlike tribes in the south of Asiatic Russia. These tribes have almost entirely abandoned the use of the camel. But as we advance eastward, we find these gigantic and mis-shapen ruminants in great numbers, the faithful companions and indispensable auxiliaries of the nomades of the East. They wander freely about the Steppes, in troops of several hundreds, browzing indifferently on the grass of the wide pastures or the foliage of the bushes. They are without fierceness, and the traveller who intrudes upon their immense domains seems only to inspire in them a benevolent curiosity. “It is impossible to describe,” says Madame Hommaire de Hell, “the astonishment they exhibited as we passed them. As soon as they caught sight of us, they ran with all speed towards us, and then stood motionless, with heads turned towards our cavalcade, until we had got to such a distance as to be no longer distinguishable.”

“Gold and silk,” says Buffon, “are not the true wealth of Asia. The camel is the treasure of the East.” It is a fact that this animal is wonderfully adapted to supply the wants of the desert races. It may be said to supply them with every object of primary necessity; food, clothing, and even habitation, fire, and the means of transport.

The flesh of the young camel, though inferior to beef or mutton, is savoury and easy of digestion; the she-camel yields an abundance of milk as substantial and agreeable to the taste as that of the cow. The camel’s skin is, it is true, a coarse wool, but long, tenacious, and readily wrought. The Mongols make it into tissues and cord. Out of the tissues they weave their clothing, coverings, and tents; with the cord, which is of various thicknesses, they fabricate the harness of their horses and other objects of equipment. Camel-leather is not inferior in suppleness and solidity to that which we make use of in Europe. The dung of these animals, dried in the sun, serves as fuel not only for cooking food, but even for working metals. Finally, as a beast of burden, the camel surpasses every other in strength, swiftness, endurance of fatigue, and, above all, in that proverbial sobriety which enables him to accomplish a journey of several successive days without taking either food or drink. From nature he has received a special organization, which well justifies his Arab name of “the ship of the desert.” It consists essentially in the structure of his feet, in that of his stomach, and in the species of hunch or hump which he carries on his back.

We know, in the first place, that the camel’s foot does not resemble that of other ruminants; it is bifurcated, but the two toes, very strong and much elongated, are furnished not with a hoof, but with a short nail, adhering only to the final phalange; they are, moreover, palmated; that is to say, reunited near the extremity by a carneous membrane, which is supplied underneath with a veritable thick and horny sole. The foot can thus plant itself on a wide surface, and seems expressly adapted to the shifting sandy soil which the camel usually traverses.

As for the stomach, beside the four compartments into which the stomach of all ruminants is divided, we notice, on the sides of the paunch, a mass of cubic cells, or partitions, always containing a quantity of tolerably pure water, very drinkable, and kept as a kind of reserve supply; so that more than one traveller, when crossing the desert, and perceiving neither fountain, well, nor stream in which to quench his devouring thirst, has preserved his life at the expense of that of his camel, by killing the poor animal, and opening his reservoir to drink its contents.

Bactrian Camel.

The hump, of which the Arabian camel, or dromedary, has but one, while the Bactrian, or camel properly so called, has two, is, in truth, “a storehouse of solid nutriment, on which he can draw for supplies long after every digestible part has been extracted from the contents of the stomach: this storehouse consists of one or two large collections of fat stored up in ligamentous cells supported by the spines of the dorsal vertebræ. When the camel is in a region of fertility, the hump becomes plump and expanded; but after a protracted journey in the wilderness it becomes shrivelled and reduced to its ligamentous constituent, in consequence of the absorption of the fat.”[25]

To be deprived of drink for from eight to ten days is no hardship to the camel. Accredited authorities testify that without any serious inconvenience he can go without drink for twenty-three and even twenty-five days. In the way of solid food, a ball of cake weighing from a pound to a pound and a quarter, will suffice him for a whole day. Often when he has set out on his journey fasting, he contents himself with browsing on the way a few green or dry bushes, and in the evening sups on a handful of dried beans. But this singular abstemiousness is not his sole good quality; his vigour, his docility, his swiftness render him equally valuable.

The ordinary burden of a small camel is from 600 to 800 lbs.; a large camel will carry 1000 lbs. or upwards, from thirty to thirty-five miles a-day; but the maharis, or those which are used for speed alone, will travel daily from twenty to thirty leagues.

The camel of the Steppes, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is, as I have already hinted, the Bactrian or camel strictly so called. This animal differs from his African congener in several very important physical characteristics, and perhaps also in some moral peculiarities. His two humps are smaller than the one hump of the dromedary. He is a little larger than the latter; his average stature is from six feet and a half to seven feet. His hair, of a deep chestnut brown, almost woolly on the humps, the head, and the upper part of the neck, is short and smooth on the body, and hangs in long fringes below the neck and around the fore-legs. He endures without inconvenience the most opposite temperatures, great heat and extreme cold, so that his habitat naturally ranges over an immense extent of country. He is found throughout the zone of the Steppes, even to the confines of Siberia, on the borders of Lake Baïkal; he was formerly still more common in Hindostan, but has now almost disappeared, owing to the great consumption entailed by the military expeditions of our East Indian Government.

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.”