Monday, June 15, 2009

Travel by Donkey

Today we look at a picture of a family traveling by donkey. The picture was taken in 1895 by the Sea of Galilee. The man has his own donkey, and his wife and children are in what look like baskets on another one. I would bet somewhere you could find people still traveling like this today.

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5 comments:

  1. Is the second one a mule?

    That's a lot of weight, the wife
    and children plus boxes for them
    to sit in, it certainly earned it's keep.
    Umbrellas always add something
    to an image, can't think of precisely why. It could be I've been looking at to many Francis
    Bacon paintings.

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  2. Those baskets look like the grandfathers of a motorcycle's sidecar.

    And I couldn't help imagining that the wife is growing fatter as the kids grow bigger, to maintain the balance. Poor beast.

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  3. I agree with MBadragan...poor beast. Seems like they could have easier rigged up something he could have pulled behind him instead. Makes my back hurt just to look at it.

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  4. If you would like to see something similar, look at some old news clips of the refuges leaving Iran. Sure, most were in cars but many were on one or two donkies. Some pulled carts stacked 6-7 feet tall.

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  5. The second one looks like a small arab horse. They are very strong, but whew! Poor thing.
    The British forces had to leave their horses behind in Egypt after the WW1 and the natives snapped them up and worked them like slaves. (Due to quarantine, the horses could not return home.) The horses suffered a great deal. An officer's wife started a charity to help the horses in the 20's after she saw how harsh their life was. I believe many soldiers, especially Australians, put their horses down rather than leave them to an grim fate.

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