THE MACHINE AGE ROLLS ON

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 14 September 1940, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE MACHINE AGE ROLLS ON

Fate Of The Transport Animals

THE transport work of the world, has so long been done by some half dozen great groups of animals that the countless beasts of burden seem to be an institution of civilisation. But thev are threatened with extinction; their use declines, the machine succeeds them, and they may pass like the giant sloth and the moa. The animal sanctuaries may one day have to include the horse, ass, the camel and the reindeer. Horses were parried across the world to make America fit for white men to live in; camels passed the seas to help set Australia on her feet. Vet in both these countries these animals have a price upon their heads. They are no longer needed in hundreds of thousands. Both have been supplanted in immense degree bv mechanical transport. I-ittle l>v little beasts of burden fade out of the scenes whose destinies their labours have helped to shape. Chi the Steppes of Asia members of the horse tribe may survive in general, service, for there inilk. meat and leather are included in"the contribution of these animals to their owners. But railways are movinsr towards the heart of Asia, and towns follow railways. The Red Indians, mounted on descendants of horses which the Spanish conquerors took to America, hunted and warred for four hundred years, but the cominir of the railway completely altered their way of life. The men of the Asian Steppes have been horsemen, herdsmen, hunters and. warriors for over two thousand years, but the opening lip of their land bv mechanical means of travel and the upspringing of cities must at last effect a revolution in their lives and so bring doom upon the horse. The vast caravan routes which wind from India and China over tbe bitter plains and dizzy mountains, bringing the products of the East (o the marts of the West, may still keep the Bactrian camel in service. Some that knew lone apes of servitude escaped into th« wilds when dust and death overwhelmed their masters and left a fair mid-Asian civilisation a voiceless desolation. Their descendants are free to-day in a setting so stark and austere that they have nothing to fear from human competition. Asia could shelter much larger multitudes of camels than now claim its hospitality, but more and more motor transport is becoming less a hazardous adventure than a realised ideal of desert travel. Motor care go into the Gobi desert and bring home freights of fossils that were animal lords of the earth millions of years ago; caterpillar tractors cross the Sahara and pierce the mysteries which were once open only to the most valiant of pioneers. The ship of the desert is thus challenged in the habitat in which, from Bible days to our own, its primacy has been unquestioned. It yields the family of its master milk, butter, covering for their tents; but even these things are not sufficient to make it worth the while of the Kast to keep in existence an animal which has resigned the harness of transport. The llama of South America, sole beast of burden of the golden lands for which the C'onquistadores once sacrificed health and life, is on liis last legs. Even the future of the elephant is doubtful. The value of these noble giants to the industry and pageantry of India has from of old been almost beyond comparison. But India is industrialising herself, taking more and more to lifts and jacks and cranes and pulleys, each of which, in skilled hands, can do the work of many elephants, with no running amok, no consumption of colossal loads of hay and meal and sugar cane per day. Elephant utility has passed its peak in India; the clearing of the jungle for motor cars will render the animal less necessary for the hunting of the tiger.

In tropical lands buffaloes are to commerce and agriculture what the horse was once to us. In thousands of Indian and African villages they are the spearhead of the breadwinner's attack on the stubborn land. But motor cars have reached the Indian and Chinese middle classes, and once the tractor reaches the land of the man who has quitted the horse and camel one more class of animals will enter the unemployment market. The reindeer seems as firmly established in the North as ever. At present he is all in all to the nomad Lapps, but who can say what the motor sledge of a busier civilisation will bring in its train? The dogs of the Eskimo and the pioneer in the wild northern wastes must also be considered. At present supplies and mail are dog-drawn to the Yukon goldfields and other remote places, but mechanical transport in frigid zones is leaving the road and taking to the air. The future may produce an Eskimo who says: "In our tribal legends there is a tradition that our forefathers and all their goods were hauled by dogs." If that happens, we must expect the tide to reach the high passes of the Himalayas, where those strange links between the sheep and cattle tribes, the yaks, play for the Tibetanß the part the llamas played for the Peruvians. There was a time when the great height of the passes beat mechanism, and froze its lubricants. But we have mastered details of that sort now, or aeroplanes could not out-soar the birds as they do. Cars may some day even urge the yak off the roof of the world, and petrol, steam or electricity will then be responsible for practically all our transport. There will be a chance, no doubt, for the &lieep and goats of certain wild tribes, who change from pasture to pasture carrying all their goods on the woolly backs, but that is almost all. The day wiil come when we shall have to seek an animal sanctuary for a peep at creatures which were once the chief workers of the world.