cr own readers

140 . A TEA-CARAVAN.
curious sight. The centre of th e road had exactly
th e appearance of being laid with railway sleepers.
As far as one could see, th e long ridges in the snow
followed each other sa regularly th at I could not help
asking what was th e reason of so cutting up the road .~
5. To my astonishment I was told that these ridges
were cau sed by th e thousands of horses in th e caravans
which had passed along the road during th e winter.
The horses know that th ey can get a better foothold
1> 1 walking in each other's footsteps, and fall into th e
h.ibit of doing so alm ost mechanically. Shortly afterwards,
I had the first of many opportunities of noting
t his for myself ; for presently a large tea-camvan cam e
a long, and I observed that it hardly ever happ ened
that a horse stepped out of th e grooves- so much so
that th e drivers, strolling alongside, seemed to have
VCl'y little to do, as the animals knew all that was
expected of them.
6. This, my first sight of a caravan on th e great
post-road, was but the forerunner of what we met
and pass ed, both day and night, almost without intermission,
all the way to Irkutsk. While many were
Liden with European goods bound eastwards, most of
them were cowing from China with tea. So great,
i.i fact, was this traffic tha t I could not help wondering
where all this immense quantity of tea could go to,
more especially wh en one considers that what comes.
to Europe by th e great post-road is only a small portion
of the annual amount imported from China.
7. Th e tea of Chi na, packed in bales of hid e, is
brought across th e Gobi desert by ox-wagons or by
camels as far as th e frontier, wh ere it is transferred
to sledges or to Siberian carts; according to th e season,