Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1899-04-21
TRANSPORT ANIMALS
auadrupeds Used IN Different PartF
OF the World as Burden
Bearers.

a school geography, recently pub
fshed in England, gives the interesting
information. that camels are employed
in the transport service on our great
plains. The text book fails to mention
the Illinois prairies as the present hab-
itat of the America bison, and, in fact,
it contains fewer errors on American
geography than are usually found in a
foreign school book. The palm for hui
moTous treatment of American matters
must be awarded to the Swiss atlas
which awhile ago stamped the word
Yankee" in. bright red letters across
the New England states.
The British inaccuracy with regard
to camels doubtless arose from the in
production, years ago, OF a few of the
animals in our southwestern semiarid
region. 1t may be that some of them
are there yet, but they have never cut
any figure in our transport service,
though they were brought to this coun-
try IN the time when pack horses and
mule trains were an everyday feature
of the great plains. The climatic con-
ditions did not suit them, and they
failed in America, though in another
land more distant still from their hab-
the Bactrian (two-hump) camel has
proved great success. Horses clamor
for oats, but the camel is content with
almost any sort of food and little of it,
and his modest Afghan driver asks a
wage of only two dollars a week. The
result is that at Burke, n. S. W., the
headquarters of 1900 camels, and at
other points in Australian territory,
To-.
merged into the desert waste, team
sters complain that they cannot COM
pete with the cheap camel service.
The effort to introduce the reindeer
as permanent feature of Alaska's
transport service will probably meet
with success. He is suited to Alaskan
conditions and is more adaptable than
the camel to geographic influences that
are not exactly those of his native
home, and he may yet do for the Es-
kimos of our arctic coast what he has
done for thousands of the fur-clad peo-
pie of north Asia Many of these tribes
have learned to like their pipe of to-
bacco, brick tea, an occasional bag of
oatmeal, and other supplies which they
think are worth travelling hundreds of
miles to obtain. Their fleet reindeer
carry them in the winter twilight to the
Russian outposts, where they barter
their furs for the commodities they
need. There is one trading center IN
Asia that takes the reindeer far from
his arctic home, and he meets there two
other leading transport animals of
Asia. This is at Urga, in northern Mon
goiia, on the tea caravan route, where
the reindeer of the snow regions en-
counters the camel of Central Asia and
the yak of the bleak Tibetan plateau.
The Angio-SaNon does not follow the
example of some European countries
which seem to have a high opinion of
the dog as a draft animal. Harvesting
the dog was forbidden by law in, Great
Britain 81 years ago, but across the
channel, in Belgium, fully 10000 dogs
in harness are seen daily in Brussels
and the surrounding country, where
the peasants bring their vegetables and
flowers to market in dog carts, and the
butcher and baker use the same sort
of turnout to deliver their comm ODDITIES.
In Amsterdam, Hamburg and some
other parts of Holland and Germany,
and also to some extent in Switzerland,
the dog team is a conspicuous indus
trial convenience, but the more fOrtu-
nate CANNES of France and Italy are
not reduced to this form of servitude.
American dog drivers are limited chief
ly to the Eskimos and the explorers
who go among them. The latter very
limited class is great admirer of the
Greenland dog that can pull a hundred
pounds through the snow from ten to
twenty miles a day and live on meat
that most other CANNES would disdain.
N " SuD