its “camel corps’, Mr. Otto Esche, an enterprising San Francisco merchant, saw
possibilities in the importation of camels for sale to private companies and individuals
as pack animals. Accordingly, Mr. Esche went to China in the spring of 1860 and
remained there until the autumn of the following year. Three shipments of Bactrian
camels, purchased by Mr. Esche in Manchuria and Mangolia, reached San Francisco.
The first two shipments, of fifteen and ten animals respectively, arrived at San
Francisco aboard the Caroline E. Foote. The bark Dollart sailed from de Vries Bay
in Siberia in the fall of 1861 with Mr. Esche himself and final shipment of forty-four
camels. The crossing took three months, and twenty-four of the camels died en route.
Esche sued the Dollart and her owners for the loss of the camels, and was awarded
$6,240 damages or $260 for each animal lost. At the trial, a Mr. Julius Bandman,
who was an agent for Mr. Esche in San Francisco, testified: “We (Julius Bandman
and H. Neilson) are agents of Mr. Esche—we are consignees of these camels. I have
received various lots of camels. We-sold the last lot of twenty-three camels, some
from the Dollart and some from the Foote. The twenty-three sold for $6000, pur-
chased by Mr. Calbreath of Victoria, British America.”

It is probable that Mr. Calbreath was acting as agent for Messrs. Laumeister, Heflly
and Ingram, who had formed a syndicate for the purpose of purchasing camels for
use as pack animals on the Cariboo road.. Adam Heffly and Henry Ingram were
Americans; the former settled on a farm twelve miles from Kamloops, and the latter
had a ranch at Grande Prairie, forty miles east of Kamloops. Frank Laumeister came
from Germany to the United States as a youth of eighteen. He settled first in
Virginia, where he married the daughter of a cotton planter. Their daughter Agnes,
who became Mrs. Thomas Buie and later Mrs. Arthur Stevenson, was born in
Richmond, Virginia. When quite small she accompanied her parents to California,
and was carried across the Isthmus of Panama. The family resided for some years in
San Francisco, where four more children were born. Mr. Laumeister then decided
to seek gold in the Cariboo—sold his real estate in San Francisco, and, leaving his
wife and children in Victoria, proceeded to the Cariboo. Mrs. Agnes Laumeister
Buie Stevenson's oldest daughter, Mrs. T. W. Herne, is at present living in Victoria.
Mrs. J. H. Anthony, a daughter of Mrs. Buie Stevenson and Mr. Stevenson, is
living in Kamloops.

According to The Daily Press of Victoria, the steamer Hermann, with twenty-two

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