Camel train
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A camel train, caravan, or camel string is a series of camels carrying passengers and goods on a regular or semi-regular service between points. Despite rarely travelling faster than human walking speed, for centuries camels' ability to withstand harsh conditions made them ideal for communication and trade in the desert areas of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Camel trains were also used sparingly elsewhere around the globe. Since the early 20th century they have been largely replaced by motorized vehicles or air traffic.[1]
Africa, Asia and the Middle East
By far the greatest use of camel trains occurs between
Camel trains have also long been used in portions of trans-Asian trade, including the Silk Road. As late as the early twentieth century, camel caravans played an important role connecting the Beijing/Shanxi region of eastern China with Mongolian centers (Urga, Uliastai, Kobdo) and Xinjiang. The routes went across Inner and Outer Mongolia. According to Owen Lattimore, who spent five months in 1926 crossing the northern edge of China (from Hohhot to Gucheng, via Inner Mongolia) with a camel caravan, demand for caravan trade was only increased by the arrival of foreign steamships into Chinese ports and the construction of the first railways in eastern China, as they improved access to the world market for such products of western China as wool.[2]
Australia
In the English-speaking world the term "camel train" often applies to Australia, notably the service that once connected a railhead at Oodnadatta in South Australia to Alice Springs in the center of the continent. The service ended when the Central Australia Railway line was extended to Alice Springs in 1929; that train is called The Ghan, a shortened version of "Afghan Express", and its logo is camel and rider, in honor of the "Afghan cameleers" who pioneered the route.[3]
North America
- United States
The history of camel trains in the United States consists mainly of an experiment by the United States Army. On April 29, 1856, thirty-three camels and five drivers arrived at Indianola, Texas. While camels were suited to the job of transport in the American Southwest, the experiment failed. Their stubbornness and aggressiveness made them unpopular among soldiers, and they frightened horses. Many of the camels were sold to private owners, others escaped into the desert. These feral camels continued to be sighted through the early 20th century, with the last reported sighting in 1941 near Douglas, Texas.[4]
- British Columbia, Canada
Camels were used from 1862 to 1863 in British Columbia, Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.[5]
Camel caravan organization
While organization of camel caravans varied over time and the territory traversed,
Camels
Caravans originating from both ends of the Hohhot-Gucheng route were composed of two-humped
The loading of camels was described by Mildred Cable and Francesca French in their book Through Jade Gate and Central Asia (1927): «In the loading of a camel its grumblings commence as the first bale is placed on its back, and continue uninterruptedly until the load is equal to its strength, but as soon as it shows signs of being in excess, the grumbling ceases suddenly, and then the driver says: "Enough! put no more on this beast!"»[10][11]
Caravan people
A caravan could consist of 150 or so camels (8 or more files), with a camel-puller for each file. Besides the camel-pullers the caravan would also include a xiansheng (先生, literally, "Sir", "Mister") (typically, an older man with a long experience as a camel-puller, now playing the role of a general manager), one or two cooks, and the caravan master, whose authority over the caravan and its people was as absolute as that of a captain on a ship. If the owner of the caravan did not travel with the caravan himself, he would send along a supercargo — the person who will take care of the disposal of the freight upon arrival, but had no authority during the journey. The caravan could carry a number of paying passengers as well, who would alternate between riding on top of a camel load and walking.[2]
Camel-pullers' salary was quite low (around 2 silver taels a month in 1926, which would not be enough even for shoes and clothing he wore out while walking with his camels), although they were also fed and provided with tent space at the caravan owner's expense. Those people worked not so much for the wages as for the benefit of carrying some cargo—half of a camel load, or a full load—of their own on the caravan's camels; when successfully sold at the destination, it would bring a handy profit. Even more importantly, if a camel-puller could afford to buy a camel or a few of his own, he was allowed to include them into his file, and to collect the carriage-money for the cargo (assigned by the caravan owner) that they would carry. Once the camel-puller got rich enough to own close to a full file of 18 camels, he could join the caravan not as an employee but as a kind of a partner—now instead of earning wages he would be paying money (around 20 taels per round-trip in 1926) to the owner of (the rest of) the caravan for the benefit of joining the caravan, sharing in the food, etc.[2]
Diet
The caravan people's food was mostly based around
Cargo
Typical cargo carried by the caravans were commodities such as wool, cotton fabrics, or tea, as well as miscellaneous manufactured goods for sale in Xinjiang and Mongolia. Opium was carried as well, typically by smaller, surreptitious, caravans, usually in winter (since in the hot weather opium would be too easily detected by the smell). More exotic loads could include
Speed
According to Lattimore's diary, caravan travel in Inner Mongolia did not always follow a regular schedule. Caravans traveled or camped at any time of day or night, depending on weather, local conditions, and the need for rest. Since the caravan traveled at the walking speed of the men, the distance made in a day (a "stage") was usually between 10 and 25 mi (16 and 40 km), depending on road and weather conditions, and distances between water sources. On occasions several days were spent in a camp without going forward, due to bad weather. A one-way trip from Hohhot to Gucheng (1,550 to 1,650 mi or 2,490 to 2,660 km by Lattimore's reckoning[16]) could take anything from three to eight months.[17]
Smaller caravans owned by Mongols of the Alashan (the westernmost Inner Mongolia) and manned by Han Chinese from Zhenfan, were able to make longer marches (and, thus, cover longer distances faster) than the typical Han Chinese or Hui caravans, because the Mongols were able to always use "fresh" camels (picked from their large herd for just a single journey), every man was provided with a camel to ride, and loads were much lighter than in the "standard" caravans (rarely exceeding 270 pounds (122.5 kg). These caravans would typically travel by day, from sunrise to sunset.[18] Such a camel train is described in the accounts of the journey made by Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart in the Gobi Desert in the mid-1930s.
Logistics
Inns called caravanserai were spread along the route of a long caravan journey. These roadside inns specialized in catering to travelers along established trade routes, such as the Silk Road and the Royal Road. Because such long trade routes often passed through inhospitable desert regions, journeys would be impossible to complete successfully and profitably without caravanserai to provide necessary supplies and assistance to merchants and travelers.
It was necessary for camels to spend at least two months between long journeys to recuperate, and the best time for that recuperation was in June–July, when camels shed their hair and the grazing is best. Therefore, the best practice was for a caravan to leave Hohhot in August, just after the grazing season; upon reaching Gucheng, weaker camels could stay there until the next summer by grazing whatever vegetation is available in winter, while the stronger ones, after a few weeks of recovery on a grain diet (grain being cheaper in Xinjiang than in eastern China), would be sent back in late winter/early spring, taking along plenty of grain for fodder, and returning to Hohhot before the next grazing season. Vice versa, one could leave Hohhot in the spring, spend the summer grazing season in Xinjiang, and come back in the late fall of the same year. Either way, it would be possible for the caravan people and their best camels to make a full round trip within a year. However, such perfect scheduling was not always possible, and it was often the case that a caravan sent out from Hohhot in August would end up staying on the other end of the route until and through the next grazing season, coming back to Hohhot about a year and a half after its departure. [17]
Loss of camels; camel hair trade
On almost every journey quite a few camels in each caravan would be lost. On a particularly exhausting section of the trip, an animal already worn out by many weeks of walking, or accidentally poisoned by eating a poisonous plant, would kneel down and not rise anymore. Since killing a camel was considered bad karma by the caravan people, the hopeless animal—whose death, if it was owned by an individual camel-puller, would be a huge material loss for its owner—was simply left behind to die, "thrown on the Gobi" as the camel men would say.[19]
Since camels moult in the summer, camel owners received additional income from collecting several pounds of
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Cultural associations
"In the Desert" ("Верблюды", literally 'Camels') is a "traditional Russian" song, performed by Donald Swann. He provides an English-language translation after every line. The song is extremely repetitive ("Another camel is approaching"), rendering the translation largely redundant, "a whole caravan of camels is approaching".[22]
Fritz Mühlenweg wrote a book called In geheimer Mission durch die Wüste Gobi (part one in English Big Tiger and Compass Mountain), published in 1950. It was later shortened and translated into English under the title Big Tiger and Christian; it concerns the adventures of two boys who cross the Gobi Desert.
See also
- Caravan (travellers)
- Caravanserai
- Cariboo camels
- Twenty mule team
References
- ^ BBC: "Dying trade of the Sahara camel train" (2006)
- ^ a b c d e Lattimore, Owen [1928/9] The Desert Road to Turkestan. London, Methuen and Co; & various later editions. Caravan logistics and organization is discussed in Chap. VIII, "Camel-Men All"; route maps are found inside the back cover.
- ^ "The Ghan; history". Great Southern Rail. Archived from the original on 2 February 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
- ^ Smithsonian: "Whatever Happened to the Wild Camels of the West?"
- ^ Cabiroo.com: Camels
- ^ According to Lattimore (1928/9, p. 207), while pregnant female camels could travel as part of the caravan with a full load, any baby camel born in the desert would have to be abandoned, since, if the camel cow were to nurse the young one, she would become too thin for work.
- ^ Cable, M. & French, F. (1942) The Gobi Desert. London: Hodder & Stoughton; p. 162
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 151.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), pp. 108–115
- ^ Cable, M. & French, F. (1937) Through Jade Gate and Central Asia; 6th ed. London: Hodder & Stoughton; p. 21
- ^ Cable, M. & French, F. (1942) The Gobi Desert. London: Hodder & Stoughton; pp. 161–164
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 74
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), pp. 156–157.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), pp. 230–231
- ^ Irwin (2010), Camel. Reaction Books, London. p. 57.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 100
- ^ a b Lattimore (1928–29), pp. 50–51.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 168.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 104.
- ^ Lattimore (1928/9), p. 52.
- ^ John Thomson: "At certain seasons of the year, camels may be encountered in tens of thousands crossing the desert of Gobi, laden with brick tea, on their way to the Russian frontier. This brick tea, in the absence of metallic currency, forms the circulating medium in Mongolia, Siberia, and Thibet. When in the province of Peichihli I witnessed the departure of a train of 2,000 of these camels laden with brick tea to be sold in the Russian markets. These beasts are also employed in transporting coal, and other commodities, from one part of the province to another, and they are highly esteemed by the Mongols, as they can be easily managed, and can accomplish long journeys in arid regions with scant supplies of food and water. As many of my readers are aware, the camel is physically adapted for traversing the sandy plains of Asia, where they are found in the greatest numbers. The stomach is supplied with bladders which enable the animal to carry a store of fresh water, and in like manner the humps are furnished with a store of food in the shape of fatty matter which may be absorbed in case of need."
- ^ Flanders and Swann, "At the Drop of Another Hat" (1964)
Further reading
- News from Tartary: a journey from Peking to Kashmir. London: Jonathan Cape (Peter Fleming's account of his 1935 bid to travel the ancient trade route from China to India known as the 'Silk Road'.)
- Lattimore, Owen (1928) The Desert Road to Turkestan. London: Methuen & Co.
- Lattimore, Owen (1929) The Desert Road to Turkestan. Boston : Little, Brown, and Company
- Maillart, Ella (1936) Oasis interdites: de Pékin au Cachemire. Paris: Grasset
- Maillart, Ella (1937) Forbidden Journey: from Peking to Kashmir. London: Heinemann (trans. of Oasis interdites)
- Maillart, Ella (1942) Cruises & Caravans. London: Dent
- Michaud, Roland & Sabrina (1978) Caravans to Tartary. London: Thames and Hudson ISBN 0-500-27359-6(translated from the French "Caravanes de Tartarie", du Chêne, 1977)
- ISBN 978-1-86197-379-5