s an
exaggeration, or say an _hyberbole_, as is the following expression, "As
big as elephants," even with Ramusio's apologetic _quasi_. Caesar says the
Hercynian Urus was _magnitudine paullo infra elephantos_.

The tame Yak is used across the breadth of Mongolia. Rubruquis saw them at
Karakorum, and describes them well. Mr. Ney Elias tells me he found Yaks
common everywhere along his route in Mongolia, between the Tui river
(long. circa 101 deg.) and the upper valleys of the Kobdo near the Siberian
frontier. At Uliasut'ai they were used occasionally by Chinese settlers
for drawing carts, but he never saw them used for loads or for riding, as
in Tibet. He has also seen Yaks in the neighbourhood of Kwei-hwa-ch'eng.
(_Tenduc_, see ch. lix. note 1.) This may be taken as the eastern limit of
the employment of the Yak; the western limit is in the highlands of
Khokand.

These animals had been noticed by Cosmas [who calls them _agriobous_] in
the 6th century, and by Aelian in the 3rd. The latter speaks of them as
black cattle with white tails, from which fly-flappers were made for
Indian kings. And the great Kalidasa thus sang of the Yak, according to a
learned (if somewhat rugged) version ascribed to Dr. Mill. The poet
personifies the Himalaya:--

"For Him the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide
Whisk here and there, playful, their tails' bushy pride,
And evermore flapping those fans of long hair
Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair,
Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing)
His title of Honour, 'The Dread Mountain King.'"

Who can forget Pere Huc's inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their
caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, "walking with their
legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung
beneath their bellies quite to the ground. The monstrous beasts _looked
exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy_." Or that other, even
more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters
of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, in the moment of congelation, and thus
preserved throughout the winter, gigantic "flies in amber."

(_N. et E._ XIV. 478; _J. As._ IX. 199; _J. A. S. B._ IX. 566, XXIV. 235;
_Shaw_, p. 91; _Ladak_, p. 210; _Geog. Magazine_, April, 1874;
_Hoffmeister's Travels_, p. 441; _Rubr._ 288; _Ael. de Nat. An._ XV. 14;
_J. A. S. B._ I. 342; _Mrs. Sinnett's Huc_, pp. 228, 235.)

NOTE 4.--Ramusio adds that