Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/35

Rh that they have been known for at least 450 years. — V. 'Izzat Ullah, who travelled as a 'Pundit' in the employment of Moorcroft, mentions that Khotan is said to abound in wild asses, wild camels, cattle, and musk-deer. —VI. Mr. R, Shaw, in his 'High Tartary': 'The Yoozbashee says they (lyre-horned antelopes), go in large herds, as do also wild camels (?) in the great desert eastward' (p. 168). — VII. Sir Douglas Forsyth, in a letter which he wrote to me from Shahidullah, on his last mission to Kashgar, mentioned that the officer who met them there had shot the wild camel in the Desert of Turfàn. It was a good deal smaller than the tame camel. — VIII. The same gentleman in the printed report of his mission gives more detailed evidence, apparently from another native informant, which I quote below. IX. Mr. Ney Elias also received strong and repeated evidence of the existence of wild camels north of the Thian Shan 'from intelligent Chinese travellers, as well as from the native Mongols. . . Many of the former, who declared they had seen these animals between Kobdo and Ili, Uliassutai and Kuchen, I questioned as to their being really wild, or having become so subsequent to domestication; but the answers were always emphatically that they had never been tame. . . . Moreover, the wild camels were always