The communards were defending the ramparts, and a steady rain of shells
had been pouring in from the Versaillist batteries for a week. Every one
in Paris was “stale” from continued siege and bombardment. War had lost
all its excitement, and nothing relieved its squalid discomfort. An
order to impress all citizens for the National Guard had just been
issued, and one of these, M. Henri de Goncourt, an author, a man of
taste, and a man of peace, had wandered into the Jardin des Plantes,
partly from sheer ennui, partly, as he would have us believe, in the
hope that he might find an empty loose box of a deer or antelope, in
which he could sleep, and escape the _réquisition militaire_ of the
omnipotent M. _Pipe-en-Bois_. He found a party of National Guards
sauntering round the Gardens, conducted by a philosophical Republican,
who halted his squad in front of the kangaroos’ cages, and gravely took
for his text the maternal virtues of “_Citoyenne_” _Kanguroo_, begging
them, “with emotion,” to observe the contrast of the animal, which
always carried its infant in its pocket, with the indifference of “_les
femmes aristo_” to their babies! The republican zeal for improving the
occasion is typical of the frame of mind to which the average Parisian
can always bring himself and his audience over any political or
patriotic question, on the most trifling occasion, a kind of conscious
insincerity which his hearers agree to share in order to enjoy the
sentiment of the moment. But the time and occasion are not often so
comical. The observer of the scene, M. de Goncourt, a writer steeped in
the literary life of Paris, a life which the siege had starved and
crushed, leaving the poor man in a state of acute _mental_ starvation
very curiously shown in his journal of the siege, declared that the
animals which had survived the first siege, or had been introduced to
the Gardens after the Prussian occupation, were almost as bored by the
loss of their “public” as he was at the loss of his. “The animals,” he
says, “are silent. The elephant, _abandonné de son public_, leaning
indolently against the wall, was eating his hay with the air of a man
compelled to dine alone.
In the first siege, the animals of the Paris Zoo which could by any
means be classed as “game” or venison early found their way into the
butchers’ and game-dealers’ shops. As early as October 3 two large stags
were exposed for sale; at the same time big tame carps, which had
adorned the fountains in the Gardens, were rubbing their purple noses
against the sides of a baby’s bath, set upon the counter, and a young
bear, freshly killed, its broad paws clenched in death, was hanging like
a sheep from the hooks above, destined for auction by hungry Parisians
on the following day. On the last night of the old year, in the shop of
the butcher Roos, in the Boulevard Haussmann, far less appetizing viands
were the subject of a sale, which for the moment was invested with an
interest equal to that attending an auction of masterpieces of art at
Christy’s. The last batch of animals from the Jardin d’Acclimatation was
on offer, to supply the materials for a New Year’s dinner. The trunk of
“Pollux,” a young elephant, was the central attraction, and among a
number of unfamiliar heads and horns, a shopman was pointing to a pile
of camel steaks.
The butcher was concluding his speech, in the centre of a circle of
women—
“It is forty francs a pound, for the filet or the ribs. Yes—forty
francs. Dear, you say? Not at all; I do not see my way to making a penny
on it. I counted on 3000 lbs., and he (the elephant) has only cut up
into 2300 lbs. The feet—you ask the price of the feet?—are twenty
francs; the other portions eight francs to fourteen francs a pound.
Allow me to recommend the elephant sausage; there is onion in my
sausage, ladies and gentlemen!”
De Goncourt was able to purchase two larks for his breakfast—like the
toasted mice of the hero of Bulwer Lytton’s _Parisians_, “dainty, but
not nutritious.” That evening he found, at Voisins, the famous elephant
sausage, _and he dined on it_.
The rarer animals from the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de
Boulogne were transferred before the siege to the Jardin des Plantes.
These were mostly bought by the proprietor of the English butcher’s
shop, M. Debos; he also bought the elephants of the Jardin des Plantes
for 27,000 francs. “Personally, I have eaten the flesh of elephants,
wolves, cassowaries, porcupines, bears, kangaroos, rats, cats, and
horses,” says the author of the _Englishman in Paris_. His views on
these creatures as articles of food are only given at length in the case
of the dog, cat, and horse. The last was supposed to have become a
recognized part of the food supply of Paris in the year before the
siege, but it never acquired any popularity. “It is very curious, but a
positive fact nevertheless, that I have heard Parisians speak favourably
afterwards of dog’s and cat’s flesh, even of rats baked in a pie; I have
heard them say, that for once in a way, and under ordinary
circumstances, they would not mind partaking of those dishes; I have
never heard them express the same good-will towards horse-flesh. One
thing is certain. At the end of the siege, the sight of a cat or dog was
a rarity in Paris, while by the official reports there were thirty
thousand horses left.”
The same writer records the opinion of an officer who was most
successful in “siege cookery” on the subject of the dog as food. This
gentleman, aided by a soldier servant, had made an excellent dish of
“larks,” which turned out to be field-mice, slightly flavoured with
saffron to disguise their musky taste. “You may disguise anything with
saffron except dog’s flesh. His meat is oily and flabby; stew him, fry
him, do what you will, there is always a castor-oil flavour remaining,
which cannot be got rid of. The only way to minimize that flavour, to
make him palatable, is to salt or rather pepper him; to cut him up into
large slices and leave them a fortnight, bestrewing them very liberally
with peppercorns. Then before cooking them, put them into boiling water
for a time, and throw the water away.”
All palates do not seem to have disliked dog so greatly. At Brebant’s,
where M. Renan and other leading writers dined regularly during the
siege, a “saddle of mutton” was brought in. “We shall have the shepherd
served up to-morrow,” said M. Hébrard. It was explained that it was a
“_très belle selle de chien_,” and that this was the third time they had
eaten dog.
“No, no,” exclaimed M. Saint-Victor, horrified. “M. Brebant is a
respectable man—he would have told us—horse, _not_ dog.”
“Dog or mutton,” said Nefftzer, his mouth full, “I have never eaten a
better _rôti_. If Brebant would give you rat, it is excellent, a mixture
of pork and partridge.”
During this dissertation poor M. Renan, who appeared preoccupied and
thoughtful, grew pale, then green, threw his five francs on the table,
and left hurriedly.
The result of the compulsory experiments in food during the siege will
not be much assistance to guide the work of acclimatization, or to aid
in the discovery of a new meat, either from the menageries of the
Zoological Gardens, or our beasts of burden, though all the needful
accessories of good cooks, good wines, and good company were available
to secure success.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTHER BEASTS OF BURDEN.
THE failure of the Zoological Society to establish any new draught
animal in this country seems to show that as long as an Englishman can
get a horse, he tries to do without any other beast of burden. The use
of dogs is no longer legal, and we have nearly discarded the sturdy ox,
even for ploughing. A few are to be seen in Wiltshire and on the
Cotswold Hills; in Berkshire there are some half-dozen teams, among them
a famous quartette of red steers belonging to Sir William Throckmorton;
and Mr. Beresford Hope’s team of “sheeted” Dutch oxen, black giants with
white “sheets” of identical shape, is one of the sights of the farm at
Bedgebury in Sussex; but outside these counties we know of none in
England.
Were we right to legislate against the use of dogs for draught? A
careful inquiry has been made in Brussels, and the verdict is that dogs
are more useful than horses for minor town traffic—quieter, cleaner, and
cheaper. “The first distinctive institution that attracts the attention
of a stranger in Belgium,” writes the Consul, “is the working-dog. Liège
is a city of great wealth and industry, employing as many horses as any
other town of its size in Europe; and yet for every horse, at least two
dogs are to be seen in its streets.” In the early morning, we are told,
the boulevards are literally alive with them. The butcher, the baker,
the grocer, the porter, carriers of all kinds, engage the dog’s
services. His step is so much quicker than that of the horse, that he
will in an hour cover twice as much ground, and he carries with him a
greater burden in proportion to his size. Six hundred pounds is the
usual weight for an ordinary dog, though a mastiff often draws as much
again. They cost about 3_d._ a day to keep on black bread and
horse-flesh, and draught-dogs are now carefully bred, mastiffs crossed
with the bull-dog to give lungs and chest fetching the highest prices,
averaging from £4 to £6. The Consul concludes by stating his opinion
that “there is not an article of merchandise, from a ton of coals to a
loaf of bread, sold in our cities, which might not be more
advantageously delivered by dogs than horses.” The Consul is doubtless
thinking of ordinary “tradesmen’s” deliveries. It would be ridiculous to
expect dogs to take the place of the brewers’ dray horses, or the
railway-goods horses,—but his views certainly deserve consideration. In
England, where their use was once common, we seem to look on dogs as
only suitable for draught inside the Arctic circle. The absence of a
strong shoulder and hard hoofs suggests cruelty in their employment.
Nothing in Holland and Belgium gives an Englishman a keener sense of
discomfort than seeing dogs in carts. His first impulse is to protest
against it as ill-usage. In reply he will learn that a careful inquiry
had been held many years ago; that Mr. Grantley Berkeley, whose personal
affection for animals, as shown in his _Memoirs_, was almost a passion,
had been consulted, and that the verdict had been in favour of
continuing their use. Many months of careful observation confirmed this
view. No animal so enjoys his work, or does it so willingly, as a dog.
Except the elephant, no other animal can be trusted to work alone like
the smugglers’ dogs between France and Belgium, or collies watching
sheep. They are scarcely ever struck or beaten either in Holland or
Belgium. They do not fight, and the only drawbacks to their use are
their readiness to attack a stranger who approaches their cart when left
in their charge, and the severe hydrophobia “scares” which their numbers
at times produce. They are exuberantly happy in their daily work, and
come of their own accord at the right hour to be harnessed. Small dogs
in little carts are always ready and anxious to race against big ones;
and though at the Hague the barking and galloping of dogs within the
city-bounds is forbidden, as “furious driving” is here, the dogs, when
returning with empty carts, may race as much as they please. Two little
boys, with their cart drawn by a sturdy bull-terrier, used often to wait
for and race a couple of half-bred mastiffs drawing a cart with two men,
the owners running alongside, and jumping on when the carts—mere narrow
shelves like all dog-carts, whether on wheels or sledges—were going at
ten miles an hour. There may be cruelty, just as in the use of any other
creature. But men are always hardest on a sluggish animal. One donkey
suffers more than twenty dogs. The legislation which stopped their use
in England was nominally humanitarian. But it has often been asserted,
that it was chiefly due to the objection which persons who drove horses
entertained for dog-carts, and to the country gentleman’s dislike of
dogs as enemies to game. We should be sorry to see dogs replace ponies
in common use. But it should not be illegal to employ them. We have seen
a little Pomeranian helping to pull its invalid master’s chair, and
evidently proud of its work. In this case, it would have been difficult
for the policeman to put the law in force. In snow-time we have
harnessed a setter and a retriever to a toboggan-sledge, and they
enjoyed the fun quite as much as their master,—indeed, they upset us at
the first corner.
The English reliance on horses, big and little, is almost justified by
the wonderful adaptation for manifold uses which careful breeding has
produced. The work of the dog must, in civilized countries, be limited
to petty draught on well-made roads and in towns. In the Arctic circle
he is a necessity to man as a beast of burden. When the Greenland dogs
die, the Greenlander must become extinct. It is impossible for him to
drag home the seals, sharks, white whales, and narwhals, which he shoots
on the ice, without his dogs, or for the Eskimo to make his long
migrations with his family and household goods to fresh hunting-grounds
without their aid. If the epidemic of rabies which half-destroyed their
teams had not been arrested by the ice-fiord of Jacobshaven, the
Greenlanders would by now have been pensioners on Danish charity. It was
noticed, as evidence of the absolute dependence of the Arctic man upon
the services of the Arctic dog as a beast of burden, that whenever a
native lost his dogs, he went very rapidly down-hill in the scale of
Eskimo respectability, and became a sort of hanger-on to the fortunate
possessor of a sledge-team. Exactly the same degradation has been
observed in the case of the Tartar who is too poor to keep his horse,
and a corresponding rise in the social scale of the “foot” Indians of
Patagonia, when a neighbouring tribe of horse-Indians lent them horses,
and provided them with hunters to teach their use in the capture of
game. On good ground, a team of six Eskimo dogs will draw a load of from
eight to ten hundred-weight at a speed of seven miles an hour. Large
teams, with light sledges and little except the driver to carry, are
wonderfully rapid. Kane, the Arctic traveller, was carried for seven
hundred miles at an average rate of fifty-seven miles a day. Lieutenant
Schwatka sent two Eskimo with a double team of forty dogs, the sledge
having its runners “iced” by pouring water over them, to the rescue of a
half-frozen sailor, who was viewed from the ship at a distance of ten
miles across an ice-covered bay just before nightfall. Two drivers sat
on either side of the sledge, with knives to cut the harness of any dog
that might stumble and be dragged to death, and the sledge was driven at
perhaps the highest speed ever known. The dash of ten miles was
accomplished in twenty-two and a half minutes. But creditable as such an
achievement is to the half-starved descendants of the Arctic wolf, the
strongest evidence against the use of the dog for general draught
purposes is the fact, that wherever the surface, even in the snow
regions, is sound and safe for any other creature than the light and
active dogs, the reindeer, or, in the more southerly districts, the
horse, at once takes its place. There is one exception, the great
Thibetan mastiff, which stands apart. These dogs, the largest in size of
any native and unimproved breed, cross the mountains regularly as beasts
of burden, and bring their loads as far as Darjeeling. For size,
courage, and general utility they are probably the finest race of dogs
in the world.
But as a rule in Asia the dog is the draught animal of the inferior
races. Mr. Nordenskiold, in his voyage in the _Vega_ to the Asiatic
shore of the Behring Sea, noticed a marked difference between the “Dog
Chukchs,” the inhabitants of the coast, and the “Reindeer Chukchs” of
the interior. The latter were better clothed and in better
circumstances. Both showed great kindness to their animals, which is
unusual among semi-savages. The “Coast Chukchs” always carried
dog-shoes, neatly-made bags of soft leather, with straps attached, to
put on their dogs’ feet if cut by the sharp snow. The herd of a
“Reindeer Cutch” came down from the pasture every morning to meet their
master. The leading stag came first; and bade him good-morning by gently
rubbing his nose against his master’s hands. All the other deer were
then allowed to do the same, the master taking each by the horn, and
carefully examining its condition. The inspection over, the herd then
wheeled, and returned to the pasture. It would be difficult to name
another beast of burden so tame and so efficient as the reindeer. A good
reindeer will travel one hundred miles a day over frozen snow, and can
draw a weight of three hundred pounds; thus surpassing the dog by
one-half in distance and two-thirds in drawing power. The loads carried
by the camels of the Heavy Camel Corps across the Bayuda Desert were
very little heavier than those drawn by the reindeer across the Northern
steppes. Including the rider, the average weight was about three hundred
and forty-two pounds. Even so, they were over-weighted, and the little
Egyptian horses ridden by the Hussars, who accompanied the column, were
less exhausted than the larger beasts when the forced march was
completed. The llama, admirable as it was for climbing the step-roads of
the Incas, which ruined Pizarro’s horses, is only an inferior camel; and
the yak, Thibetan goat, and buffalo are highly specialized forms, suited
to particular climates and conditions. The water-buffalo is the one
domestic animal which evolves the enthusiasm and affection of the
Chinaman. He loves it as the Hindoo does his cow, and paddles by its
side in the squashy rice-fields, with a smiling contentment on his bland
countenance, due to a feeling that in his buffalo he owns the one thing
needful to make his husbandry a success and satisfaction. Of all the
creatures of the flowery land, it is the only one which the Celestial
takes with him into the countries of the barbarians into which he
migrates. Long ago the Chinaman in Singapore and the Straits Settlements
became a buffalo breeder, and now he has imported them into the Sandwich
Islands. There also the trotting ox is now established, and is regularly
ridden by the Kanaka boys. The breed is maintained in great purity, and
for pace and size they match the best animals of the Indian plains.
But the elephant must still hold the first place as a beast of burden.
His normal load is eight hundred pounds, so that in India he is reckoned
equal to eight ponies, to five pack-mules or stout bullocks, and to
three and one-third of a camel. Next to the elephant in general
usefulness we should be inclined to place the “trotting ox” of India.
“All Indian oxen can be trained to trot,” says Mr. Lockwood Kipling.
“The sloping quarter and straight hock may possibly account for
something in their more horselike gait. One of the first things to
strike a stranger is the hurrying ox. The rekla, a light two-wheeled
cart drawn by a pair of oxen, cheap, speedy, and convenient, is the
hansom cab of the natives of Bombay. All through the Mahratta country
the ox is the common draught-animal, differing in speed and size
according to the work for which he is required. Cattle of the Nagore
breed, used by rich men to draw their state carriages, used to be kept
near Delhi for carrying despatches. Mr. Youatt was informed that they
would travel with a soldier on their back fifteen or sixteen miles in
the day, at the rate of six miles an hour. The Nagore cattle have none
of the awkward swinging motion of the legs of the English cow. They
bring their hind-legs under them in as straight a line as the horse.
“They are very active,” continues Mr. Youatt, “and can clear a
five-barred gate with the greatest ease.” One owner possessed a calf
which would jump an iron railing higher than a gate, and a bull which
would leap the same railing to go to water, and having drunk, leap back
again.
Napoleon borrowed his idea of bullock transport for the first stages of
his Russian campaign from the Indian army. But the Indian bullocks are
shod, Napoleon’s were not, and the bullock transport was ruined before
the frontier of Poland was reached. But even if this important detail
had received attention, it may be doubted whether a large experiment in
the use of a new beast of burden ever succeeds in an old country.
Natural selection never proceeds faster than when controlled by human
necessity, and though the dog may be reinstated in the tradesman’s
carts, the ox continues to disappear from the dwindling area of arable
land in this country.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SOLDIER’S CAMEL.
“BACTRIAN camels,” says Major A. Leonard in his work on the _Camel, its
Uses and Management_,[14] “or those from Afghanistan, or any such cold
climate, would thrive just as well in a re-mount depôt in England as
they do at the Zoo. What in the world is to prevent their introduction
into this country, and the formation of camel and mule transports?
Nothing, that I can see.”
Footnote 14:
Longmans, Green and Co., London. 1874.
Major Leonard speaks with the authority of one who has spent sixteen
years as a transport officer, and if the suggestion which he makes,
based as it is on the observation of the good health and long lives
enjoyed by the northern camels at the Zoological Gardens, be adopted by
the War Office, the original intention of the founders of the Society,
to make their Gardens an example of what was possible in the way of
acclimatization, would be fulfilled in an unexpected quarter.
[Illustration:
BACTRIAN CAMEL. From a photograph by Gambier
Bolton.
]
The reason for Major Leonard’s suggestion is to be found in the failure
in the management of our camel transport in war-time. The natural liking
of Englishmen for domestic animals of all kinds is quite equalled by the
skill they usually show in their management. Yet the sufferings of our
transport animals in war are such as at any other time would cause a
pang to the national conscience. It is a fact that the feeling of
humanity, which will not tolerate the overcrowding of a cattle-ship, is
scarcely shocked when, as in the Afghan War, twenty-thousand camels
perish, mainly from mismanagement, or when a transport officer can write
of the fate of those creatures in the Nile Expedition—“Seeing, as I have
done, hundreds and thousands of camels die from sheer exhaustion,
brought on by neglect and ill-treatment, arising from down-right
stupidity, obstinacy, and ignorance, is enough to make one ashamed of
having had any connection with the business.” The push across the Bayuda
Desert was a race against time; yet it hardly seems consonant with the
usual fairness of Englishmen to their “mounts,” that of the thousand
camels used, probably not one survived the treatment it received; and
Count Gleichen, writing after service with the Camel Corps throughout
the war, says, “I am afraid we looked upon them as mere machines for
carrying, and hardly thought of their sufferings from hunger and thirst
as long as they could be whacked along.” This was after the battle of
Metemmeh. Of the same example of cruel and disastrous mismanagement Sir
C. Rivers Wilson says—“The camels had been without water for from six to
seven days, having been accustomed to water every second or third day.
They were on one-third rations, which they did not always get. For
thirty-seven hours they were tied down so tightly in the zeribah before
Abu Klea, that they could not move a limb, and I doubt if they were fed
at all during that time. Then for sixteen hours they were on the march,
and tied down for another twenty-four hours without any food. The result
almost justified the saying, that we thought we had found in the camel
an animal which required neither food, drink, nor rest; we certainly
acted as if the camel were a piece of machinery.” Except during the time
of battle, all this cruelty to the animals and waste of mobility in the
force was unnecessary. The so-called “desert” was full of food and well
supplied with water. On the day before the retreat from Metemmeh, a
camel convoy of the friendly Kababish came in across the desert in
perfect condition. “It made my mouth water,” writes an officer, “to see
these magnificent, well-fed brutes swinging along, each with its load
balanced on its hump.” His own beast had holes in its skin into which
you could have put a cocoa-nut. Read in the light of these facts, the
inimitable ballad in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling sums up the miseries of
the commissariat-camel, and the incompetence of the uninstructed British
private to manage it, is an invitation to substitute common-sense and
kindness for ignorance and cruelty in the treatment of the four-footed
army which helps to fight our battles.