Elephants.--They are expensive and delicate, but excellent beasts of
burden, in rainy tropical countries. The traveller should make friends
with the one he regularly rides, by giving it a piece of sugar-cane or
banana before mounting. A sore back is a certain obstacle to a
continuance of travel; there is no remedy for it but rest. The average
burden, furniture included, but excluding the driver, is 500 lbs., and
the full average day's journey 15 miles.
Dogs.--Dogs will draw a "travail" (which see) of 60 lbs. for 15 miles a
day, over hard, level country, for days together; frequently they will
accomplish much more than that. For Arctic travel, they are used in
journeys after they are three years old; each dog requires eight or ten
herrings per day, or an equivalent to them. A sledge of 12 dogs carries
900 lbs.; it travels on smooth ice seven or eight miles an hour; and in
36 days, 22 sledges and 240 dogs travelled 800 miles--1210 versts.
(Admiral Wrangel.) Dogs are used by the Patagonian fishermen to drive
fish into their nets, and to prevent them from breaking through the nets
when they are inside them. (See next paragraph for "Sheep-dogs.")
Goats and Sheep.--Goats are much more troublesome to drive than sheep,
neither are they such enduring walkers, nor do they give as much meat;
but their skins are of such great use to furnish strong leather, that it
is seldom convenient to make up a caravan without them.
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