THE SHIP OF THE DEsert.

N this title the reader will readily recognise the dromedary. His time-honoured claim to it, recently contested, has been now re-established by an able advocate, and it will be yet a long time ere steam and iron will entirely supplant him as a vehicle in chief. More to the point has been the question raised as to the camel's individual qualities. (The term "camel" is here used generically, though of course excluding the lamas; there being little to be said of the Bactrian or two-humped camel not equally true of the dromedary.)

"Praise undeserved is satire in disguise," and in this sense no living animal has been more gratuitously satired than the camel. His merits are incontestable, and may be mainly summarised in the threefold qualities of sobriety, swiftness, and enduring strength. His services to man can scarcely be overrated by his most partial friends; they have been ever paramount and priceless. To him the Calmuc owes his ancient and poetic freedom. By his means, for many centuries alone, the Russian merchant trafficked with the wealth of China; and without his aid, in all probability, the plains of Northern Africa would have remained a virgin desert to the present day. Nor is he, when penned and slaughtered, of mean importance to his lord and master. The milk, the flesh, the wool and skin of camels are the attire and food of countless families. The spoils in detail have each their known utility, and we have it on the authority of Speke that the camel's hump is not surpassed in goodness by the much-vaunted trunk of the black elephant.

Surely these amply honouring distinctions might suffice to save the camel from his friends. So unhappily chosen have been the epithets bestowed on him, that the exaggeration has become grotesque. The Arab stares on hearing him described as patient, amiable, intelligent, gentle, and thinks at first that you must mean the horse; but on learning that you actually allude to the camel, he lifts his eyes to heaven, wondering at the strange delusions to which the Prophet abandons the departers from the true faith. To call the camel as obstinate as a mule, is to depreciate his obstinacy by a full third. His patience resembles that of a thwarted hog, and his gentleness is of that endearing kind which we usually attribute to the bear. As

regards his intelligence there still remains some difference of opinion. He is allowed by all to be superior to the calf, but few accord him rank beyond the bullock. Between the chieftain's dromedary and the mere sumpter camel there are certainly distinctions to be noted, but the prominent characteristics comprise the entire family, and the Arab who proclaims the horse his willing friend, reviles the camel as a reluctant slave, rendering impatient service, and deterred by fear alone from turning on his vigilant oppressor.

The camel's resentment is nevertheless intelligible. His powers are overtaxed, and his sobriety is abused. Man is his tyrant, and rules on the principle of the va victis! The struggle is from birth to death, and it is not always with impunity, as we shall see hereafter, that the victory remains to man.

To be judged of correctly the camel must be observed at the moment of adjusting the packloads. In tones of wrath anticipated the driver calls to him to kneel, accompanying the cry with lashes pitiless and repeated. The camel would hesitate, but obeys abruptly under the influence of some sharp cut, foul indeed, but highly successful. A stifled roar follows, betokening anger and defiance; although, once on his knees, it is seldom he resists further than by passive demonstrations. On the approach of the packsaddle he contrives nevertheless to writhe in such a manner as to present his back sideways. This expected hindrance is redressed suddenly by a smart kick on the ankle bone, and the moment is seized for rapidly poising the panniers. Occasionally he attempts to rise, and in this case the driver falls heavily across his knees in a sitting posture, straining the joints downwards, and subduing him with sheer pain. Should he attempt to bite, as is oftenest the case, in an instant he finds his lips compressed and his nostrils gagged; meanwhile a neighbour hurriedly completes the loading, and the camel is released at the point of incipient suffocation.

With this explanation of hostilities as they actually exist, it remains to be seen whether man or camel was the first aggressor. And here it must be conceded to man that his instincts, though cruel, are highly selfish, and would naturally prompt him to economise a useful life, and as the Arab well knows that the camel's days are shortened by ill-treatment, it is fair to suppose he finds it impossible to treat him well. Such is, alas, the untoward truth. Monstrous in person, the camel surpasses in defects and vices the whole family of domestic quadrupeds. He is at once more fetid than the goat, more stubborn than the mule, more pusillanimous than the sheep. In fine, the camel resembles his master in too many essential

particulars to live and work with him on other than terms of irreconcileable rivalry.

Nor are his services unmingled profit. His delight is to slip his girthing, and scatter his load along the sands; and though the footprints usually enable the owner to recover his merchandise, the bales are often sand-scorched, and the loss of time incalculable. When mounted, the camel's pace and movements are mostly insupportable. To keep his seat the native rider himself is compelled to sit with vigilance. To all others the exercise is one of painful need or of pure English bravado. When the animal is at full speed or kept at an artificial trot, not always attainable, there is some alleviation, but otherwise the movement resembles that of a rocking-horse tilted from tip to tip, and balked incessantly with eccentric shocks. The effect on the beginner is to induce sea-sickness, with this difference, that instead of the long and helpless misery of a steamboat convalescence, your recovery is here secured at once by a surprising and most unsettling remedy. The camel has been watching his opportunity, and judging it come, from the languid resistance you begin to oppose to him, suddenly whisks his stomach bottom upwards, spills you violently, tramples you into the sand, bites your ribs, flies off the track to right or left, and leaves you bruised and blistered to be rejoined at leisure by the caravan.

From what precedes the reader may fairly ask how the presence is accounted for in Egypt and elsewhere of innumerable camels, ever pacing with noiseless regularity, and, to all appearances, docile and pacific. It must not be forgotten that in man these camels recognise their vanquisher, and have learnt by hard experience that they have in him a relentless and unsparing taskmaster. It is, moreover, chiefly at the morning and evening exercise of loading and unloading that the camel exhibits his vicious temper. Once beaten into harness, and spent with unheeded lamentations, he rises sore and sullen, to march till evening prayer in uninterrupted and disdainful silence.

The camel's real tyrant is, nevertheless, the professional cameldriver, rather than collective man. In spite of his many faults he has his friends and protectors, and it is always at his own peril that the driver overloads him. It has been urged, in proof of the camel's intelligence, that when overloaded he refuses to rise. This reminds one of the intelligent infant that let go the red-hot flat-iron of its own accord. The fact is the camel cannot rise when loaded to excess, and this is so well understood that the most unscrupulous driver regards it as the test of his maximum capacity. He rises often with a load too heavy to be carried far, but an abuse so flagrant is speedily

and fitly punished by the premature death of the unlucky ruminant. A law fixes the legal weight for an adult male at seven hundred pounds Arab (or 638 lbs. English), and it is related by Brehm in his popular description of the animal kingdom, that in the province of Siout, in Upper Egypt, a gigantic camel once entered the open doors of the divan, where Latief-Pacha, the acting governor, sat dispensing justice from his official chair.

"What wants this animal?" said the Bey; "he groans and staggers; he has surely a complaint to make against his master. Send for him instantly, and let us confront the parties."

The driver arrives, and, with guilty stupefaction, detects at once the point at issue. The load is weighed in his presence, and declared to amount to one thousand pounds.

"Do you not know," inquires the Bey, "that it is illegal to charge any camel's back with more than seven hundred pounds? The pressure of half this load represented by even fleeting blows would be to you an intolerable burden; think then what the whole must be expressed in enduring weight on the back of your unhappy servant. But, by the Prophet's beard and by the all-puissant Allah, who has created man and beast to be brethren together, I will teach you to feel a brother's pain! Seize him and give him the five hundred strokes."

The order was executed, and the judge immediately rejoined, "Now then, be off, and remember your fate will be worse should your camel have just cause for accusing you again."

"The Lord preserve you and bless your justice," replied the broken, if not repentant, criminal, as he writhed out of court, no doubt to curse his camel and deplore his own misfortunes.

But unamiable as the camel may be shown to be at all times, it is in the spring of the year that he appears to the greatest disadvantage. From January to March the adult male is, indeed, a ghastly beast; his coat rough, his flanks lean, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his whole expression wild and feverish. During this season he is reputed especially dangerous; a ring is accordingly passed through his nose, and his mouth effectually muzzled. These precautions have been dictated by experience, many instances having occurred of men and animals being mutilated and even killed by excited camels. Brehm speaks of one that seized his groom by the elbow, bit through the joint, and maimed the limb for life. Another so badly wounded a Malay pedlar that he died soon after in the native hospital at Cairo. A third killed on the spot a small white terrier belonging to an Austrian officer. The dog was a recent importation, incautious,

curious, and confiding. The camel seized him by the neck and tossed him some yards' distance into an empty tank, from which he was taken out immediately neck-broken and lifeless. The officer narrating the circumstances takes occasion to remark on the extreme cowardice of camels. "The hedjihn," he writes, "that massacred my dog was afterwards frightened out of his wits by a tame rabbit." The fact is, the camel takes fright at all unfamiliar objects which present themselves suddenly. In the case cited he had, no doubt, become accustomed to the presence of the dog, but the rabbit, which was a large drab and white angora, had just escaped from an adjoining granary, and quite unexpectedly skipped across the yard. A lion could scarcely have produced more terror. The camel flew madly round the yard, bellowing with terror, and evidently believing the rabbit was after him. In the desert camels exhibit the same faintheartedness. The distant roar of the lion, says Bruce, suffices to disperse an entire caravan. In such case the baggage is hurled to the ground, the sand flies in blinding clouds, distress and scuffle annihilate self-command, and the day goes down upon the unrepaired confusion. The same author adds that the merest noise or the least startling apparition would have pecisely the same effect if seen or heard by a sufficient number to produce a panic; and he mentions, amongst other things, the howl of the hyena, the appearance of a strange dog, an ape, a lizard, and even an umbrella. A fright sufficing to paralyse the camels is barely enough to disturb the composure of the mules and asses, who may be their travelling companions.

To the nose-ring and muzzle it is sometimes necessary to add the foot-log. The camel uses his foot for kicking with considerable dexterity. He is, however, less dangerous behind than in front. With the hind leg he describes a semicircle after the fashion of the cow, and the kick to be serious must be aimed with nicety. In front he rather strikes than kicks, either felling like the hemione or ripping downwards like the kangaroo or ostrich. The salient nails are fearful weapons, and have sometimes been used on the unwary bystander with cruel and even fatal precision. In a combat between two rival males the conflict rages to the death; teeth and nails are employed indifferently, and it most often happens that the vanquisher withdraws disabled from his prostrate and exhausted foe.

Another inconvenience of the Eastern spring is the intensification of the camel's odour. The emanations of the male, at all times most offensive, are literally asphyxiating during the season of the rut. The Arab himself-perhaps the least sensitive of organised beings