Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/202

 With a constitution as strong as iron, the camel is so accustomed to a dry atmosphere that it fears damp. After ours had lain a few nights on the moist ground in the Kan-su highlands, they caught cold and began coughing; their bodies too were covered with nasty boils; and if we had not gone on to Koko-nor, in a few months they would all have died, a misfortune that actually befell a lama who arrived in Kan-su with his camels at the same time as we did. The commonest form of illness to which they are subject is the mange, homun in Mongol. The sick beast is gradually covered with festering sores, loses its coat, and at length dies. Glanders is another malady from which they occasionally suffer. The treatment adopted by the Mongols in the former case is to pour a soup made from goats' flesh down the animal's throat, and to rub its sores with burnt vitriol, snuff, or gunpowder. At Koko-nor rhubarb is the universal remedy for camels as well as for all domestic animals, but the Mongols like to make a mystery of their medicines. In damp weather camels are very liable to coughs: the best remedy in such cases is to give them tamarisk bushes to eat, which grow abundantly in the valley of the Hoang-ho, and in other parts of Southern Mongolia.

On long journeys, particularly in those parts of the Gobi where there is a quantity of small shingle, they often become footsore, and in a little while quite unable to walk; the Mongols then cast the lame animal, and sew a piece of thick leather under the worn sole; a painful operation for the poor brute,