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Updated: May 27, 2025
Lest any of my readers should fall into the common error of supposing that the dromedary has two humps, let me say that the only difference between it and the ordinary camel is that it is smaller and better bred, just as our racehorses differ from draught animals, and must not be confounded with the Bactrian or two-humped camel of Asia.
But what gave me great satisfaction was to note over these trees to the eastward a two-humped mountain, not more than six or seven miles distant the very one I had mislaid the day before. Here was reality and a chance of getting back to civilisation.
Occasionally we saw camels turned loose for the summer grazing; they are all of the two-humped Bactrian sort, and can endure the most intense winter cold, but the heat of the summer tells upon them severely, and when used in the hot season, it is generally only at night.
It is longer than the others, but is practicable for near half the year, and can be traversed by horses and two-humped camels instead of yaks and ponies, as at the western crossings. On three stages only are wood and grass absent. It ascends from the south over a plateau marked by salt or brackish lakes.
"Your way is easy, friend, as long as you keep to the straight path and have yonder two-humped mountain in front. To the left is the sea, and behind the hill runs the canal and road by which all traffic comes or goes to Ar-hap.
She has, up to to-night, known no rider but me, and is used only for short journeys of about seven days; you see these two-humped beasts can only go three days with comfort without a drink, but their pace is so smooth that it almost induces one to sleep.
Of this route we have a trace in the land animals engraved upon the well-known Black Obelisk, where the combination of the small-eared or Indian elephant and the rhinoceros with the two-humped Bactrian camel, sufficiently marks the line by which the productions of India, occasionally at, any rate, reached Assyria. The animals themselves were, we may be sure, very rarely transported.
In half an hour a whole village may vanish, emigrating northward in summer, and southward in winter. Many a Kirghiz cavalcade was overtaken on the road, with long tent-ribs and felts tied upon the backs of two-humped camels, for the Bactrian dromedary has not been able to endure the severities of these Northern climates.
"It was a general idea, I know I had it myself that there were two-humped camels, mighty pleasant to ride. But I believe it is all a mistake." "The one-humped beggar is not easy to ride, any how!" said Grady. "No, that I vow he isn't!" cried Kavanagh. "Some of the camels trained to trot, and called hygeens, are a bit easier, I believe.
At this season the stately, two-humped camels, with beautiful coats of brown wool a foot in length, come down from Mongolia, bearing loads of meat and furs, together with frozen game and fish from Manchuria and the Amoor river, and coal from the mines north of Peking.
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