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CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO HIS INTRODUCTION
OUR WESTERN STATES AND TERRITORIES.

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SOCIETY, MARCH 2p, 1865,

BY

JOSEPH WARREN FABENS,
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NON-RESIDENT MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY.

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THE

USES OF THE CAMEL:

~ CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO HIS INTRODUCTION INTO
OUR WESTERN STATES AND TERRITORIES.

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READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL,
SOCIETY, MARCH 2p, 1865.

BY

JOSEPH WARREN FABENS,

NON-RESIDENT MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY.

NEW YORK:
Carleton, Publisher, 413, Broadway.
WASHINGTON, D. C.: FRANCK TAYLOR.

1865.

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THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,

Tue cession of California to the United States by the treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, was an event fraught with the

most important consequences to our country. It was one of

those events which mark eras in a nation’s history. It gave to
us an uninterrupted stretch from ocean to ocean across the
finest parallels of the earth’s surface. It opened to the imagin-
ation a new highway to the Indies, and foreshadowed the idea
of a continental domain where the world’s last great empire
should sit enthroned. Yet its first promise, though grand, was
somewhat remote and. obscure until illumined by the halo of
that wonderful discovery of gold which followed immediately
upon our occupation of its territory.

The effect of this discovery was not merely to infuse new
vigor, and a broader, hardier development into the American
character, and give a swift impetus to our national growth; but
it made our country, as it were, a centre to which was attracted
the migratory population of other lands. Circumstances
favored this end. An appalling famine was scourging Ireland.
Europe was rocking under political convulsions, and a great

tide of immigration, following the traditional path of empire,

was surging upon our Atlantic shores. The volume was easily
broken, for a long-continued influx of immigrants had at length |
raised up a barrier against themselves, and a portion was swept
round to the Pacific. There, on those golden shores, where toil
and recompense went hand in hand, representatives of every
country in Europe worked side by side with American citizens,
native Indians, Peruvians, Chilians, and the half-breeds of Mex-
ico and Central America. “The Australian joined them from

4 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

his continent in the South; the Malay and Polynesian from the
isles of the Pacific; while the Chinaman came forth like an
anchorite from his cell, built a temple for his idols in San Fran-
cisco, and joined in a concourse of human tribes such as the
world never before beheld.” ‘The auri sacra fames was a fever
in men’s blood—Cape Horn and Magellan were familiar as
household words. The narrow belt of the Isthmus of Panama
was thronged with an eager, straining multitude. Up against
the swift current of the often fatal Chagres river, under broiling
suns and drenching rains, they toiled. Along the Gorgona or
Cruces road, through mud, such as no army of the Potomac
ever dreamed of, they waded, and with unblanched cheeks they
faced the pestilence that stalketh at noonday. But that road,
which is to be the highway of nations, and which will be
worthy of its name—that path, where the traveller from the
farthest East, and the traveller from the farthest West, shall
meet and clasp hands; across the American plains, over the
Rocky Mountains, along the great central plateau, through the
gorges of the Sierra Nevada down into California—was un-
travelled, because unexplored—unknown. Here and there a
hunter ora trapper,—a few adventurous spirits, journeying, like
Abraham and Lot, westward with their flocks and herds,—these,
and the Indians whom we hunted to their inevitable doom, and
flying Mormons whom we hounded till they stood at bay, and
prospered in the wilderness and made the desert as the rose,
were all the sojourners in that magnificent land.

Years rolled away—ten short, busy years—and in the sum-
mer of 1858, Greene Russell and a party of adventurers, follow-
ing up the Arkansas River, came to the country about Pike’s
Peak, and there found gold. Here was another point of attrac-
tion, and the overland travel to Colorado began. Afterwards,
but at a long interval, came the silver discoveries of Arizona
and Nevada; then the mineral discoveries of Idaho, Montana,
Utah, and New Mexico, flashing suddenly and brightly from hill-
side to hill-side, like the fires which bore tidings of Grecian
victory in old Homer’s song—rather like the breaking of a new
day on the mountain-tops, coming from the west, and reversing
the order of the sun, and shedding over hill and valley and
rolling plain, “ the light that never was on land or sea.”

The line of travel has set in along this route, and needs only

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 5

increased facilities to be increased a hundred fold. For these
lands that now, for the first time, have bared their lustrous
bosoms to the day, invite the settler with a health-giving climate,
a fertile soil, wood and water, and resources of pastoral agricul-
ture unrivalled on the globe. The Rocky Mountains, no longer
regarded as a barrier to separate the east from the west, are
recognized as the strong backbone, permeated with veins of
material power to hold the country together. A recent writer,
whom I infer to be ex-Governor Gilpin of Colorado, whose elo-
quent description of the parks of that territory we had the
pleasure of listening to in these halls last season, says: ‘‘ The
amount of transportation between the Missouri River and Col-
orado, as the first point of entrance to the great mountain sys-
tem, is prodigious. The great plains represent the ocean
between the city of New York and Liverpool. It is no uncom-
mon thing to see as many as five thousand wagon-teams in one
camp, and it is not setting the figure too high to say that at
least half a million of people are more or less interested or en-
gaged in this vast system of intra-continental transportation.”

A daily line of stages is running, with tolerable regularity,
from Atchison to Placerville, California. The Mormons have
their trains; and thousands of adventurers, apart from the above-
described travel to Colorado, with their own private convey-
ances, are pressing annually to the farthest west. Yet this
method of communication with our territories is slow and
difficult, and runs but over a narrow ribbon or two of soil.
The large portion of our western domain is yet untrodden by
the foot of civilization, inviting the explorer with its promise of
fresh fields and pastures new.

The Secretary of the Interior, in his last annual report to
Congress, says: ‘ During the past year additional discoveries of
precious metals, particularly of silver, have been made in the
region flanking on the eastward the extended mountain ranges
of the Sierra Nevada, A vast belt of some one or two hundred
miles in width, and eight or nine hundred miles in length, em-
bracing portions of Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona, is rich in
silver ore. Owing to the remote locality of these mines, and
the difficulty of transportation thereto, but little machinery
well adapted to the rapid and economical reduction of the
various ores has been introduced. In that portion of Nevada

6 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

through which the Pacific Railroad will pass, many rich veins
have been found, and it is estimated, by persons familiar with
the subject, that if the mines now opened there were supplied
with the proper machinery, they would yield ten millions of
dollars per month. When we reflect that the region of country
in which deposits of the precious metals abound, includes large
portions of three States and six Territories, and that the richest
veins of ore heretofore discovered are as yet but slightly de-
veloped, while new discoveries are constantly being made, it
will be perceived that the annual product of the mines in the
United States must soon reach a magnitude without precedent
in the history of mining operations.”

And again :—‘ The mines of New Mexico and Arizona are
probably not inferior in richness to any within the limits of the
United States. Owing to their inaccessibility they are indiffer-
ently wrought; all efforts to make them available must neces-
sarily be feeble, and attended with but partial success, until
roads shall have been constructed through those Territories from
the Atlantic States, or from the navigable waters of the Pacific.
The benefits resulting from such roads would not be confined
to the product of the mines. A new highway, at all times ex-
empt from obstruction by snow, would be open to the Pacific.
Passing by the valley of the Rio Grande to El Paso, it would
receive a large portion of the rich commerce of Central and
Western Mexico.”

Here is food for consideration. The country teeming with
precious metals, and gold at one hundred per cent. premium in
its great commercial mart! Now, it must be evident to all,
that one of the principal means to be used for restoring the
national credit, and thereby putting the crowning cap-stone to
the nation’s triumph over its enemies everywhere, is to facili-
tate emigration and cheaper transportation to the mining re-
gions. And as an adjunct in this movement, I respectfully pro-
pose the Camet. I do most earnestly believe, and it is a convic-
tion forced upon me after long study and observation of the sub-
ject, that the introduction of the camel into our western States
and Territories, on a scale of sufficient magnitude, will furnish a
cheaper, speedier, safer, more regular. and: reliable mode of
travel and transportation than any which now exists, or will be
substituted until the iron horse snorts defiance to all com-
petitors.

DOMESTICITY AND DOCILITY. ‘is

Domesticiry AND Docitrry.

The camel is presented to us from the beginning as the
friend and servant of man. THe figures in the first catalogue of
domestic animals of which we have any record, and appears in
this domestic state to have been a birthday gift to man from
his Creator. In those primitive days, when the earth was fresh
from the hands of its Maker, and the uses of the several king-
doms, which God gave man for his inheritance, were best
understood, we find the camel to have been the most regarded
of all the animal creation; the companion of his master in his
farthest wanderings, as well as the denizen of his household and
the playmate of his children. When a wife was sought for Isaac,
the old servant of Abraham fixed upon a regard for camels as
an appropriate mark by which he would not fail to recognize
the maiden whom the Lord had destined for the favorite child
of his master. And how beautifully did the gentle Rebecca
answer to the test: ‘‘ And when she had done giving him drink,
she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have
done drinking.

“‘And she hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough,
and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all
his camels.” ,

When Jacob was returning home, and wished to meet his
brother Esau upon friendly terms, he sent him, among other
presents, thirty milch camels with their colts. Then, as now,
on the long inland eastern routes the camel was the family con-
veyance ; Jacob in his travels, we are told, set his sons and
wives upon camels, probably several upon the same animal.
It is certainly no uncommon sight, at the present day, to see
half a dozen women and children huddled cozily a camel-back,
going to make a neighborly call on some cousins, perchance two
or three hundred miles distant. The appreciation of the camel
to kindness, in word or tone or touch, has, doubtless, much to
do in rendering him the favorite animal of the household, and,
indeed, causing him to be looked upon as an inseparable por-
tion thereof. The marabouts in Africa, when they enter a
house, invoke a blessing on the chief and on his wives, his chil-
dren and his camels; and when they are sent to negotiate a
_ peace with a belligerent tribe, they preface their diplomatic

8 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

conference by a warning note, that as they, the belligerents,
treat the terms proposed, so shall they and their camels be dealt
with. The author of “An Excursion in Asia Minor” says:
“The care of the camels seems to be very much left to the
children. Ihave just watched a string stopping on an open
plain. A child twitched the cord suspended from the head of
the first—a loud gurgling growl indicated the pleasure of the
camel as it awkwardly knelt down, and the child, who could
just reach its back, unlinked the honk which suspended from
either side the bales of cotton; another child came with a bowl
of water and a sponge, and was welcomed with a louder roar of
pleasure as it washed the mouth and nostrils of the animal;
this grateful office ended, the liberated camel wandered off to
the thicket to browse during the day—and this was done to each
of the forty-five, which, all unbidden, had knelt down precisely
as the one I have described, forming a circle, which continued
marked during the day by the bales of goods lying at regular
distances. On a given signal in the afternoon, at about three
o’clock, every camel resumed its own place and knelt down be-
tween its bales, which were again attached, and the caravan
proceeded on its tardy course.

‘‘T am not surprised at finding the strong attachment of these
animals to the children, for I have often seen three or four of
them, when young, lying with their heads inside a tent, in the
midst of the sleeping children, while their long bodies remained
outside.”

‘Oh, tribes of Sahara,” says an Arab song, “you boast of
your camels, but know you, that they who would possess camels,
must know how to defend them.” .

The peculiar gentleness, the docility of the camel; his plain-
tive voice; his coaxing looks and gestures; his “ soft, woman-
ish ate as Kinglake styles them; the fidelity with which he
clings to man, and the need which is seems to feel of his pro-
tection, excite those sentiments of pity which are akin to love,
even as his sturdier and more heroic characteristics challenge
our admiration.

The general kindness with which camels are treated in the
East, is of course not without ‘many lamentable exceptions.
Woe to the unfortunate camel who falls sick on the road. The
hot iron or some fiery internal application is freely and merci-

GEOGRAPHICAL RANGE. 9

lessly applied, until the animal staggers on in sheer desperation,
or succumbs sullenly to his fate. I have seen Arabs belaboring
their beasts most cruelly because they hesitated to rise under
their heavy packs, perchance for the twentieth time, at the mere
whim of their drivers. Admiral Porter, who commanded the
“Supply” when the government camels were brought over in
that ship, says, that on one occasion, when a camel was slow to
rise, one of the natives in charge suggested pouring a bucket
full of scalding hot pitch over his back. Porter dryly ebserves
that he had no doubt of the efficacy of the application, as re-
garded the camel’s getting up quickly, but he preferred a more
merciful method, which had the desired effect. Last summer,
having some camels to send by railroad from Marseilles to
Paris, I dispatched them from the ship to the station in charge
of an Arab, with instructions not to embark them until my
arrival. When I got there I found one of the animals covered
with ropes, and six Frenchmen pulling away on them as for
dear life, to drag him into the cars. Of course the camel re-
sisted, and the six Frenchmen were getting the worst of it. I
ordered the ropes cut adrift, told the Arab to bring up a bag
of barley, wherewith in a persuasive manner he was to precede
the animals into the car. The camels at once saw the point of
the joke, and yielded gracefully to the suaviter in modo.

GEOGRAPHICAL RANGE.

Nothing can be more erroneous than the opinion which com-
monly prevails with regard to the geographical range of the
camel. Because he is better adapted than any other animal to
certain local conditions, and, indeed, by his remarkable powers
of abstinence and endurance, has bridged over vast spaces of
the earth’s surface, not otherwise penetrable by man, many
have inferred that, apart from these influences of soil and
climate, he would deteriorate and become comparatively use-
less. General literature fosters this idea, and associates the
camel exclusively with the hot sun, the shifting sands, and
waving palms of the desert. But the facts of the case destroy
this poetical illusion. The principal countries where the camel
has been in extensive use for centuries lie between the 15th
and 52d degrees of north latitude—the large portion being in
the north temperate zone. Johnson, in his Physical Atlas,

10 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

embraces in the camel countries the Canary Islands, Morocco,
Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, the Great Desert back of those coun-
tries, and Egypt on the continent of Africa, Arabia, Asiatic
Turkey, Persia, Cabool, Beloochistan, Hindoostan, Birmah,
Thibet, Mongolia, a portion of Siberia, and Tartary in Asia, the
Crimea, and European Turkey.

It will be seen that we have within these limits seasons of
the most intense cold as well as tropical heat.

In conversing with a venerable Arab, in Algiers, on the
subject of introducing camels into the United States, I suggested
the propriety of purchasing the mountain breed, which are
used chiefly between the northern limit of the Great Desert and
the Mediterranean, where the climate does not vary much from
that of our Western country. ‘‘ By no means,” said he; “take
the desert camels. The animals that can stand extreme heat
can support equally well extreme cold.”

Erman writes, under date of February 20th, and with a
temperature of twenty-five degrees of Fahrenheit below zero :—
‘“On the Chinese side (at Kiachta) we saw seventy fine camels
turned loose, and feeding on the frozen and withered grass.
They fear the severe winters of this climate as little as the ©
parching heat in the sand-steppes;” and Marsh, our former
minister to Constantinople, now Minister at Turin, adds to the .
foregoing :—

‘““So numerous is the camel in these frozen realms, that
almost the whole commerce between Russia and China, by way
of Kiachta, is carried on by means of them, and they transport
merchandise over the vast distance between Orenburg on the
Ural, and Pretropawlowsk on the peninsula of Kamschatka.
In the month of October, Timkorski met on the desert of Gobi,
in latitude 46° north, and at the height of two thousand five
hundred feet above the sea, a herd of twenty thousand camels.
The Russian expedition against Khiva and Bokhara, in 1840,
employed more than an equal number, and Berghaus estimates
the number of camels in European Russia at not less than one
hundred thousand. | .

“Father Huc’s lively narrative of his travels in Tartary is’
full of similar proofs of the power of the camel to brave the icy
frosts and chilling blasts of that frigid region, and we may
reasonably conclude that he is able to endure the greatest

FRUGALITY AND POWER OF ABSTINENCE. 11

extremes of temperature known in climates habitable by civil-
ized man.”

The introduction of the camel into Tuscany has been a
marked suecess. They have multiplied from a few that were
brought from Upper Egypt, and now number several hundred.
They are used on the farm of the Grand Duke at Pisa, where
they do excellent service, requiring no food beyond what they
can gather for themselves by browsing among the pine barrens,
and are not housed during winter in the latitude of 43° 30/
north, where the climate is more trying than in our North-
western Territories.

The results of the experiments made with the camels in the
Zoological Gardens in London, and the Jardin des Plantes
and Jardin d’Acclimation, in Paris, have been equally grati-
fying. The camel-attendant in the London gardens told me
that the water frequently froze quite solid in the stables, but
the animals did not seem to suffer at all from the cold. He
considered them, indeed, less liable to be affected by change
of weather than the rugged coach-horse of England.

Jamrock, a famous dealer in animals in London, had six fine
camels in his stables last fall, which he told mé he could not
find a market for in England: He said he had already sup-
plied the men of taste who fancied good animals; that the
menageries were full; and added that they would probably
remain so; that camels were very hardy animals; never died,

ete. He seemed quite gloomy about it.
“e
Frueatiry anp Powrr or ABSTINENCE.

The characteristic which pre-eminently distinguishes the
camel from other animals of draught’ or burden is his frugality
and extraordinary power of abstinence. He takes kindly to the
coarsest grasses and shrubs, munching dry leaves, branches of
pine or cedar, thistles, and other prickly plants, with apparent
relish. It is not the custom of the Eastern tribes to feed their
camels. They subsist, for the most part, on what they pick up
on their travels, and when turned out to browse at night.
When herbage and browse are not to be had at all, or as an
encouragement at the beginning, or solace at the end of a
journey, a few pounds of barley, or a few handfuls of beans or
dates are sometimes given ; but this is a rare ebullition of gen-

12 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

erosity, which probably astonishes the Arab who indulges in it
quite as much as the animal who is the amazed recipient.
When stabled in cities they are fed on hay and chopped straw,
and consume about halt the average allowance for a horse.
The fat of the camel, when he has any, goes to the hump.
This is his storehouse of nutriment, which he there secretes
when it is abundant, and reabsorbs when it is not found else-
where sufficient for his wants. The first point that an Arab
jockey regards, in bargaining for a camel, is the external ap-
pearance of the hump. As that is full or shrivelled, so does he
estimate the condition of the animal. After long and tedious
journeys, the hump is often seen flattened to near the level of
the back.

Major Wayne, of the United States Army, in a report upon
camels, to the Secretary of War, dated on board the “ Supply,”
April 10th, 1856, says: ‘ Beyond this supplying with food by
reabsorption, the hump does not seem to be intimately connected
with the animal’s vitality ; for Linant Bey informed me that he
had repeatedly opened, with a sharp knife, the humps of his
dromedaries, when from high feeding they had become so
plump as to prevent the fitting of the saddle, and removed
large portions of the fat, without in any manner injuring or
affecting the general health of the animal.”

Not only is the hump a store-house of solid nutriment, on
which the camel may draw ad libitum as long as it lasts, but
he is provided with water-tanks in his stomach, where he can
stow away his water for a cruise, like an outward-bound galliot
before the time of patent condensers. He has not only four
stomachs, but there is in one of them a kind of reservoir, formed
of cavities or cells, capable of holding several gallons of water.
And he is also fitted up with pumps like a ship, and can pump
the water up out of his tanks into his mouth, to moisten his
often dry and dusty tood. Indeed, Cuvier supposes, and more
recent naturalists have accepted the theory, that this ancient
and honorable animal, who browsed about the grounds of the
first Pharaoh, is furnished with that triumph of modern im-
provements known as a patent condenser. His conjecture was,
that the stomach of the camel is not only able to retain for
many days water swallowed by the animal, but that it possesses
the further power of secreting a special fluid for moistening the

FRUGALITY AND POWER .OF ABSTINENCE. ; 13

fauces and viscera, and mingling with the food in rumination, in
some such way as certain fish are able to keep the skin moist
for some time after they are taken from the water, by the
exudation of a fluid secreted for that purpose. It is even said
that the fluid found in the water-sac after the death of the
camel possesses chemical properties which prove it to be an
animal secretion. The Arabs affirm this to be the case, and the
French in Algiers seem inclined to acquiesce in this opinion.

General Carbuecia, of the French Army in Algiers, states
that “a dromedary, dying by accident, was afterwards opened
in the presence of several French officers. The reservoir pre-
sented the appearance and consistency of a melon, and contained
more than fifteen pints of a greenish water of no bad flavor.
The Arabs present declared that if it were allowed to settle for
three days it would become clear and drinkable. The French
tried it, and the Arabs were found to be correct in their state-
ments.” 3

Now, with regard to the time that camels will go without
drinking, authorities differ, but all agree that his power of
abstinence in this respect is wonderful. A French report of the
expedition to ’Aghouat declares that the camels of the corps
did not drink from February to May, though the weather was
hot; and General Carbuccia, the commander of the corps, states
that the Algerine camel never drinks during the last two months
of autumn and the entire winter and spring. He adds: “ At the
beginning of summer he drinks, and then abstains fifteen days ;
after having drunk again, he goes fourteen days without water,
then thirteen, then twelve, diminishing gradually his periods of
abstinence by a day, until he reaches the seventh day, after
which he drinks once a week, and not oftener, whatever may
be the heat or the fatigues of the journey.”

Durham and Clapperton mention a case of eight days’ entire
privation of water, with dry food. Burckhardt records an in-
stance of like abstinence of the same duration in the month of
August, and, in his ‘ Notes on the Bedouins,” he ascribes to the
camels of Darfur the power of dispensing with water for nine or
ten days, even when on the march. “The Tibboos and other
tribes, who constantly traverse the Sahara, are very confidently
affirmed to possess camels which can support a privation of
fifteen days without serious inconvenience. I have myself,” he

14 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

continues, ‘‘ witnessed in Arabia Petrea an instance of complete
privation for four days, in very hot weather and with dry
fodder.” Major Skinner declares that the camels of his caravan
did not drink between Damascus and the Euphrates (from the
3d to 23d of April), though water was offered to them on the
tenth day of his journey. Tavernier’s camels, on one occasion,
were nine days without water, and Russell mentions a case of
abstinence for fifteen days. A neighbor of mine in Salem,
Massachusetts, Colonel Miller, formerly collector of the port,
kept a camel in his stables for a winter, which passed a con-
tinuous period of six weeks without drinking. The camels
that I brought from Africa the past season did not taste water
from the time of their shipment at Algiers until they were
landed from the railroad cars at Havre. I led them to a trough
at the station of the Mediterranean road in Paris, but they
merely snuffed up its cool fragrance for a moment, and then, at
the word of command, stepped gayly off across the boulevards.
Neither did they drink at all during their voyage across the
Atlantic to New York, embracing a period of twelve days,
“Ships of the land,” in sooth!, The gallant old steamship
“New York” was not more independent of the Croton and the >
water-tanks of Southampton than were my stanch clippers,
“ Biskra” and “ Luled.”

SHIPS OF THE DESERT.

There be some hair-splitters who have objected to this time-
honored appellation of ‘‘ships of the desert,” contending that
the simile would not be likely to oecur to the Arabs, who are
not navigators, and averring that the word which we translate
“ship” means simply wagon or vehicle. However this may be,
there is a peculiar fitness in the simile of the ship, as many of
us who have experienced feelings similar to sea-sickness on
riding for the first time a camel-back. might perchance unwil-
lingly admit. The camel, as we have seen, before setting out
on a journey, provisions himself. for a voyage; and even as a
ship, guided by human intelligence, finds its way over the
watery waste, so does he, with unerring instinct, lay his course
direct from oasis to oasis, finding a path where all is pathless
across the broad-lying sands of the desert. To see a caravan
going out of the city gates laden with precious freight, the

SPEED AND ENDURANCE. 15

camels, with heads erect, already scenting the pure air of the
offing, their drivers gayly singing, or shouting farewell to the
friends they leave behind, stirs the blood like the sight of a
gallant ship, its deck alive with cheery mariners, its sails belly-
ing in the breeze, as, with creaking spars and straining rigging,
it bows its head before the freshening blast, spurning the slavish
waters of the shore, and leaping to the freedom of the sea.
Again, in your travels on some bright, sunshiny morning, you
behold them, with their white awnings spread, coming up above
the distant horizon of the plain, swinging and rolling across the
intervening expanse, and bearing majestically down upon you,
for all the world like a homeward-bound East Indiaman running
before the wind from Good Hope down to St. Helena. Then,
when they arrive in port, and their cargoes are discharged, no
awkward floundering or lying on their side to rest, as other
animals do, like a ship stranded or hove out when she is a hulk
and not a ship, but, doubling their limbs under them, they
come down handsomely fore and aft, and so lie, gallantly swing-
ing at their anchorage, moored stem and stern, like a frigate in
the Downs.

Yet it must not be supposed that it is all plain and prosper- -
ous sailing on these seas of sand. Eastern people are proverb-
ially improvident, and, in case of accident, are soon on short
allowance. Sometimes springs dry up in the desert, and cara-
vans stray in search of others till they are lost. Sometimes all
provision fails. Sometimes the fatal simoom strikes them. Then
shipwrecks occur in those vast solitudes, as was the case with a
Syrian caravan of three thousand camels and six hundred men
which perished in 1858, near Hara IjiSheham. “It was bound
from Damascus to Bagdad, and lost the way. No Bedouin
happened to be within reach, and a tribe came upon their
remains long after their death.” If any of their number put
off on fleet beasts in search of aid, as boats sometimes do from
sinking ships, they, too, perished by the way. No fated bark
ever went down, amid the loneliness of ocean, under more
helpless circumstances, or amid surroundings more awful and
sublime.

SPEED AND ENDURANCE.

The camel unites in himself the two sterling qualities of

speed and endurance. It is incorrect to suppose that the drom-

16 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

edary or running camel is of a different species from the ordi-
nary burden camel. He differs only in. being of purer blood,
finer organization, and superior training; as the race-horse dif-
fers from the dray-horse in our streets. The ordinary pace of
the burden camel with full pack, when driven regularly, is from
three to five miles an hour, which they will keep up for twelve
hours on a stretch, and go for twenty or thirty days without
showing signs of fatigue. Some writers affirm that they do
better than this, while others place their performances at a
lower rate. It would not be fair, however, to measure the ani-
mal’s capacity by what -he actually performs in the East. The
Orientals place little value upon time, and have a disjointed,
shuffling habit of travelling, allowing their beasts to browse
along the road, and stopping at all sorts of odd times, and on
the most trivial pretences, in a way that would be quite irk-
some to our go-ahead race. Nevertheless, as express-riders or
mail-carriers, or when any sudden emergency compels them,
they scour the country with astonishing rapidity, and perform
feats that seem almost incredible.

The speed of the dromedary or running camel is established
beyond question. The Hebrew word for dromedary is kirka-
routh, which means “a swift beast,” and is so translated in
Isaiah, 66th chapter and 20th verse. When David fell upon
the Amalekites, we read that “there escaped not a man of
them, save four hundred young men, which rode upon camels
and fled.”

In 1811 Mahomet Ali, when hastening to destroy the Mame-
lukes, rode the same camel from Suez to Cairo, eighty-four
miles, in a single night. Marsh states that a French officer in
the service of the Pacha repeated the same feat in thirteen
hours, and that two gentlemen of his acquaintance have per-
formed it in less than seventeen without a change of camel.
Laborde made the journey in the same time, and went from
Alexandria to Cairo, nearly one hundred and fifty miles, in
thirty-four hours. Colonel Chesney rode with four dromeda-
ries from Baarah to Damascus, nine hundred and fifty-eight
and a half miles, in nineteen days and a few hours (more than
fifty-four miles per day), the animals having no food but such
as they picked up on the desert. They averaged from forty-
four to forty-six paces per minute, with a length of step of six

SPEED AND ENDURANCE. b

feet five inches. Mails have been carried from Bagdad to
Damascus, four hundred and eighty-two miles, in seven days ;
and, on one occasion, by means of regular relays of dromeda-
ries, Mahomed Ali sent an express to Ibrahim Pacha from
Cairo to Antioch, five hundred and sixty miles, in five days
and a half. Colonel Chesney says the swift dromedary can
make eight or nine miles per hour, and accomplish seventy
miles a day for several days in succession. Buckhardt, in his
“Travels in Nubia,” states that the owner of a fine dromedary
laid a wager that he would ride the animal from Esneh to
Keneh, and back, a distance of one hundred and twenty-five
miles, between sun and sun. He accomplished one hundred
and fifteen miles, occupying twenty minutes in crossing and
re-crossing the Nile by ferry, in eleven hours, and then gave
up the wager. Buckhardt thinks this dromedary would have
travelled one hundred and eighty or two hundred miles in
twenty-fours without injury. The interesting paper extracted
from the notes of General Harlan, and printed in the United
States Patent Office Report of 1853, states that the ordinary
day’s journey of the dromedary of Cabool is sixty miles, but
that picked animals will travel one hundred miles a day for
several days in succession, their greatest speed being about ten
miles an hour.

A French writer in the Revue Orientale says:

“| knew a camel-driver who had bought a dromedary be-
longing to a sheriff of Mecca lately deceased at Cairo. This
animal often made the round trip between that city and Suez,
going and returning, in twenty-four hours.” The distance from
Cairo™to Suez, as I have already stated, is eighty-four miles,
making one hundred and sixty-eight miles travel in twenty-four
hours.

In an appendix to the work of General Carbuccia, by Jomard,
we find that a detachment of the celebrated dromedary regi-
ment, in the French army of Egypt, marched from Cairo to El
Arish, from El Arish to Suez, from Suez to Cairo, and trom
Cairo to Pelusium, a distance in all of not less than six hundred
miles, in eight days, and he states that the ordinary day’s march
of the regiment was thirty French leagues, or about seventy-
five miles, without a halt.

- Abd-el-Kader compares the pace of the dromedary to the

18 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

noble pace of the ostrich; and also speaks of him,as rivalling
the gazelle in fleetness. He says that the Bedouin of the desert
gives his horse camel’s milk to drink to stimulate him in the
race, and adds that a man, by drinking it exclusively for a con-
siderable length of time, acquires such swiftness of foot as to
compete successfully with the horse in running.

‘When you shall meet a mahari,” or swift camel, says an
old Arab proverb, ‘and shall say unto his rider, Salem Aleck,
ere he shall have answered you Aleik Salem, he will be afar off
and out of sight, for his fleetness is as the wind.”

A writer in Chambers’ Journal says he has seen the camel
in Northern India move off at the rate of eighteen miles an
hour with a piece of light artillery at his heels; and he adds, in
another place, that his usual gait is from twelve to thirteen
miles an hour, but that on being pushed he will readily knock
off his eighteen to twenty miles within the same period.

The author of Eothen speaks of ten to twelve miles an hour
as the ordinary jog-trot of the dromedary, and says he can keep
it up for three days and nights, without food, water, or repose.

An Arab chief whom I met in the grain-market at Blidah,
gravely informed me that General Yusuf, commander-in-chief
of the native forces in Algeria, had repeatedly driven a pair. of
dromedaries before a wagon from Blidah to Medeah, a distance
of twenty-four miles, in half an hour. He explained that the
general tied a handkerchief over his mouth, and wore goggles,
and had his ears stuffed with cotton-wool, and so got over the
road very well. I said nothing by way of comment, but as
this dignified chieftain haughtily declined a cigar which I
offered him, on the ground of his not using the weed, and I
afterwards detected him smoking an old stump which I had
thrown away, I came to the conclusion that if he did not ex-
actly prevaricate, he might, as a man of business, have added a
handsome per centage to the truth.

The Bedouin who came with me from Africa in charge of my
camels, tells me that he has often travelled faster a camel-back
than the highest speed yet attained on the Northern New Jer-
sey railroad; and this I will not gainsay.

BurprEn CAPACITY.

The special usefulness of the camel is found in his capacity of
bearing burdens. The Hebrew word gamal, which we trans-

BURDEN CAPACITY. 19

late camel,.means literally bearer. He is sometimes used for
draught, as in Egypt for ploughing, and British India for drawing
heavy ordnance, and some have conjectured that, with a suita-
ble harness, he would make a very serviceable draught animal.
But nature seems to have designed him especially for the pack
or saddle. The Arabs say that he is born ready harnessed for
his work, with his pack-saddle on, in the shape of his hump of
fat, gristle, leather, and thick, soft hair. They certainly have
added but little to the natural arrangement. The artificial
pack-saddle is made by stuffing a bag eight or nine feet in
length with straw or hay, sewing the ends together, and fitting
it round the hump. Over this is placed a primitive frame-work
of some kind of hard wood, composed of two pieces about
eighteen inches each in length, disposed in the shape of an
inverted V in front, and two other similar pieces behind the
hump; these are connected and kept in place by two cross
pieces at the bottom, of some three or four feet in length. The
whole is dovetailed together and tied with strips of leather. A
sailor, with his palm and needle, and skill in splicing, would
turn out the whole affair complete at an hour’s notice. The
frame nestles into the pad, which finds a secure footing in the
soft hair round the hump, and only a loose rope, by way of
girth, is required to keep the whole in its place.

The camel begins to carry burdens at four years of age, and,
if properly treated, will maintain his usefulness to forty. The
weight which they can carry varies somewhat, according to the
species and condition of the animal. The ordinary pack for a
full-grown camel in Algeria is from three hundred to four hun-
dred kilogrammes, which, with the weight of the pack-saddle and
driver’s luggage, is equivalent to from seven hundred to nine
hundred pounds. I have often seen camels walking under
much heavier loads, and to this is to be added the weight of
the driver, who walks and rides by turns, as the fit is on him.
Among some camels imported into Texas, a few years ago, was
one that would rise and walk under a burden of nineteen hun-
dred pounds. Even this extraordinary feat has been beaten,
as I understand, by one of the Government camels, now in Cali-
fornia, which has carried a pack of two thousand pounds for
fifty miles in a single day. The camels in the Canary Islands
carry an average pack of one thousand pounds, but their journeys

20 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

are of course short. Those employed on the Grand Duke’s
farm, in Tuscany, carry seventeen hundred pounds, Tuscan
weight, equivalent to twelve hundred pounds English, and
work regularly under this pack from sunrise to sunset. The
statements as to the loads carried by- camels in Egypt, Euro-
pean Turkey, Arabia, and other farts of Asia, vary from four
hundred to fifteen hundred pounds. The usual load of the
cotton-carriers in Persia is one thousand pounds.

A French nobleman, the Duke de Luynes, has recently trans-
ported on camels, from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, the compartments
of a small iron steamer, which he has there set afloat, much to
the horror of the Bedouins, who regard it as Satan’s last mani-
festation on those accursed waters. This is an item which our
mining friends will do well to make a note of.

The patience and cheerful perseverance exhibited by the.
camel under his wearisome packs is truly something to admire. .
You see him coming into town, from a journey, it may be, of
weeks, his back bending under his burden, yet striding im-
periously through the narrow streets, with head erect, swaying
gently to and fro, and calm philosuphic¢ eye, and face tranquil
as the unworldly sphinx, as if really the heavy load on the
other side of his long neck were borne by some other animal
than himself, with howe affliction he could not possibly be
expected to sympathize.

It is to be considered, in perusing the statements of travellers
as to the ordinary camel-load in far Eastern countries, that these
loads are somewhat modified by the fact that the commodities
thus transported are usually of the most precidus and costly
character. The long journeys which they make, and the neces-
sarily high cost of freight, preclude the carrying in this way of
common fabrics and the life-sustaining grains. These are not,
as a rule, articles of international traffic, but are raised and
manufactured in the countries where they are consumed.
Camels coming into Algiers from the desert usually bring
valuable dyestuffs, fine wool, camel’s hair, rich skins, tobacco,
palm-oil, ostrich-feathers, ivory, and gold-dust. There’s a glow
of wealth, an odor of spicery, and a flashing of jewels about
these camel-freights ever since the time when Joseph’s brethren
lifted up their eyes as they sat at meat, “and looked, and behold
a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels

BURDEN CAPACITY. a1

bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down
into Egypt.” In Isaiah’s prophecy of the blessings in store for
the Gentiles, he says: “The multitude of camels shall cover
thee; the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah, all they from
Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and incense, and they
shall show forth the praises of the Lord.” Again he says:
“They will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses,
and their treasures upon the bunches of camels.”

The arrival of a caravan, “ laden with treasure,” is exquisitely
painted by Longfellow, in the “ Kalif of Baldacca” :—

“Into the city of Kambalu,
By the road that leadeth to Ispahan,
At the head of his dusty caravan,
Laden with treasure from realms afar,
Baldacca and Kelat and Kanahar,
Rode the great Captain Alau.

“The Khan from his palace window gazed ;
He saw in the thronging street beneath,
. In the light of the setting sun that blazed,
Through the clouds of dust by the caravan raised,
The flash of harness and jewelled sheath,
And the shining scymitars of the guard,
And the weary camels that bared their teeth,
As they passed and passed through the gates unbarred
Into the shade of the palace yard.”

+

Equally good is that sumptuous ballad of Don Fulano, de-
scribing the Cid’s entry into Valencia, after his victory at
Abelfueda, and slaying the five Moorish kings :—

‘With dripping sword and horse all sweat he rode into the town,
The black gore from his plume and flag was raining hotly down;
His mace was bent, his banner rent, his helmet beaten in:

The blood-spots on his mail were thick as spots on leopard’s skin.

‘“‘ And after came the hostages, the ransomed and the dead—
The cloven Moors in wagons piled, the body or the head;
And heaps of armor, golden-chained, gay plumes and broken flags,
Piled up as in the tanner’s yard, or heaps of beggars’ rags.

“Then stately camels, golden-trapped, each silver-white as milk,
- Rich laden with the aloes-wood, soft ambergris, and silk;
Rich Indian camphor, martin-skins, from Khorasan the fair;
Ten piles of silver ingots, each a Sultan’s triple share.

22 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

‘Great bales of orange saffron-weed, and crystal diamonds clear ;
Large Beja rubies, fiery red, such stones the Emirs wear.
Last came the shekels and the bars, in leather bags sealed red,
And then black slaves, with jars of gold upon each woolly head.”

SADDLE AND FURNITURE.

The riding-gear of the dromedary is somewhat lighter and
more elegant, but otherwise of similar construction to the pack-
saddle. Some tribes have adopted the Moorish pattern, which
is in the form of a bowl with stirrups, two of which they attach
to the frame-work and pad of the Arab saddle, one before and
one behind the hump. The baggage of the travellers is swung
across midships. The forward seat is occupied by the servant
or driver, who occasionally rests his feet upon the camel’s neck
by way of a change; and the after, which may be styled the
quarter-deck, is the seat of the master.

The family arrangement is altogether different. A pair of
stout wooden frames is slung over the pack-saddle, somewhat
resembling straight-backed chairs, in which, protected by awn-
ings, ride the high-born dames. Another contrivance is a pair of
wooden boxes, furnished with cushions of lion or leopard skins,
about four feet in length and two in width, usually surmounted .
with a stylish awning, supported by posts at the four corners,
and another rising from the centre of the saddle. These awnings
have side-curtains, or perhaps lattices, through which the Mus-
sulman women catch glimpses of the outer world. You occa-
sionally meet a whole family, not indeed so large as Solomon’s
or Brigham Young’s, cuddled together under one of these moving
tents. There is also the camel-litter, which is nothing more or
less than an Eastern palanquin, borne by two camels harnessed
before and behind to its long shafts. This conveyance, in which
half a dozen may comfortably ride, is only used for invalids or

noble families.
CAMEL-RIDING.

~ You do not vault into the saddle of your dromedary after the
chivalric manner of horsemen. The performance, if less grace-
ful, is often more laughable, and I cannot describe it better than
by quoting from a lively writer in an old number of the American
Whig Review, who saith :—

“But the dragoman is sounding ‘ boot and saddle,’ after his

CAMEL-RIDING. 93

fashion ; our camels are laden, our dromedaries are waiting, not
indeed champing the bit and pawing the ground like fiery
eoursers, but, with half-shut eye, lazily ‘chewing the cud of
sweet and bitter fancy.’ Let us mount our ungainly steeds and
away to the desert.

“The camel, as everybody knows, kneels to receive his load
and his rider, and the burden he ean rise with is said to be the
measure of what he is able to carry. The Bedouins often climb
to the saddle without bringing the camel to his knees, or even
stopping him, by putting one foot on the callus of the knee,
and so clambering up by the neck and shoulder; but I recom-
mend no such experiments to you. You will find mounting
in the ordinary way ticklish enough in the beginning, and you
run considerable risk at first of going off by a very illogical a
priort, or & posterior’ movement, as the animal rises. It is a
bad eminence to fall from, and until you have had considerable
practice in this sort of slack-rope exercise, it is good to hold
fast by the saddle-pins, both fore and aft, while the dromedary
is unfolding his joints and working his traverse upwards.
Further, see that your attendant keeps one foot on your camel’s
knee until you are well posited and balanced, for he is apt to
start up on feeling the weight of his rider, and in this case you
may very likely go up on one side and come down on the
other. When all is ready, you give the signal, your Arab re-_
leases the camel, a sudden jerk from behind pitches you upon
the pommel as he raises his haunches (for, as we have told you
before, he comes up stern foremost), and then a swell from the
stem throws you aft, and so on zig-zag until he is fairly up,
when, after a little more rolling, while he is poising and steady-
ing, backing and filling, and getting his feet into marching
order, he steps off, and you are at last underweigh on your
quest for Mesopotamia, Arabia Petrea, or the oasis of Jupiter
Ammon.”

Once on the road, you feel a sense of security in your lofty
seat that is quite encouraging. You have no fear that he will
stampede on hearing the shriek of a locomotive, or an organ-
grinder entertaining the community with the tune of “ Sweet
Home.” If he should happen to stumble and fall, which is a
very unusual occurrence, he comes down slow and sure, and
does not immediately afterwards threaten your brains or your

24 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

bread-basket by any playful indulgence in light gymnastics
with his heels. As for shying, as a country horse will do ata
yellow dog, or at a lawyer with his green satchel, he rather
merits, on the contrary, the encomium bestowed upon the horse
that you remember Mr. Winkle was to ride once upon a time.

“Shy,” said the ’ostler, “vy, bless you, sir, he vouldn’t shy,
if he vas to see a ’ole vagon-load 0’ monkeys a-comin’ down the
street vith their tails shaved off.”

The gait of the camel, from its peculiar jerking motion, is at
first disagreeable to most persons, but you soon become accus-
tomed to it, after which the exercise, and the refreshing purity
of the air, at so great a height from the ground, operate as an
exhilarating tonic. A camel-ride of days—not of hours—is
always a pleasant experience to look back upon. ‘Travellers
invariably refer with delight, and sometimes with the greatest
enthusiasm, to their journeys a-camel-back.

And thine eames apart from a strictly economic view of the
subject—is an important consideration: the pleasure to be
derived, and the vigorous health to be acquired, by a system of
camel-riding. Genuine camel-riding J mean—not as we stiffen
up our nautical nerves by a trip from the Elysian Fields, round
the light-ship, and so back to New York—but camel-riding, _
day after day, for a succession of days—a trip to Colorado or
Salt Lake, or down to Albuquerque, or Santa Fe. It would
do us good. J think it might become fashionable. Americans
‘need a little change of this sort. They are too much in the
sugar and cotton line, as Halleck says. They deal too exclu-
sively with the inanimate forces of nature for their own real
comfort, delving in mines, going down into wells after oil, put-
ting steam into harness to ride behind it, and otherwise shame-
fully abusing it. They need a little more of that life in the
open air that gave Winthrop his bounding pulse, and made
him none the less a patriot for that. Glorious chap. What
an outrageous flow of spirits was on him when he struck Bos-
ton Tilicum in the backwoods of Oregon, and they had coffee
and crisped bacon for supper, and toasted doughboys in ridicu-
lous abundance!

‘Three things,” says Abd-el-Kader, “give vigor of body anil
joy of heart—air, exercise, and the aspect of things external.”
Hear Kinglake on this subject: ‘To taste the cold breath of

IMPORTATION INTO THE UNITED STATES 25

the earliest morn, and to lead or follow your bright cavalcade
till sunset through forests and mountain passes, through val-
leys and desolate plains, all this becomes your Mode of Life,
and you ride, eat, drink, and curse the mosquitoes, as system-
atically as your friends in England eat, drink, and sleep. If
you are wise, you will not look upon the long period of time
thus occupied by your journeys as the mere gulfs which divide
you from the place to which you are going, but rather as the
most rare and beautiful portions of your life, from which may
come temper and strength. Once feel this, and you will soon
grow happy and contented in your saddle-home.”

“It is so sweet to find one’s self free from the stale civilization
of Europe! Oh, my dear Ally, when first you spread your car-
pet in the midst of these fresh scenes, do think for a moment of
those of your fellow-creatures that dwell in squares and streets,
and even (for such is the fate of many) in actual country
houses—think of the people that are ‘presenting their com-
pliments,’ and ‘requesting the honor,’ and ‘much regretting’
of those who are pinioned at dinner-tables, or stuck up in ball-
rooms, or cruelly planted in pews; aye, think of these, and so,
remembering how many poor devils are living in a state of
utter respectability, you will glory all the more in your own
delightful escape.”

ImMPoRTATION INTO THE Untrep STATES.

When we reflect on the eminent usefulness of the camel in
the East, and the vast numbers that there contribute in various
ways to man’s comfort and support, it appears, at first sight,
matter of surprise that he has not hitherto been introduced to
any general extent upon this continent. All the great nations
of the old world, possessing wide tracts of unoccupied or thinly-
settled country—the Chinese, Tartar, Persian, Russian, Arab,
Turk, and Egyptian—use the camel. Some of these have used
him from the beginning; but none that have once enjoyed his
services have manifested any subsequent disposition to forego
them. On the contrary, in Russia, European Turkey, and
Western Africa, the uses of this valuable animal are becoming
daily better appreciated and more widely extended. In Al-
geria, where the French have constructed magnificent roads at
enormous expense, the camel remains the favorite means of

26 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

transportation. The Casbah is in ruins, and “the civilizing
flag of France” waves from its topmost remaining turret; only
the site where stood the pirates’ lookout, whence the Algerines
were wont to signalize the appearance of a strange sail in the
offing to their confederates in the port below, is now pointed
out to the traveller; for the pirate’s occupation is gone. The
eaves and holes in which burrowed the swarthy Moors, and the
dark alleys through which they stealthily crept in their daily avo-
cations, have given place to spacious blocks of houses and broad
boulevards; but the Arab still comes from the mountains and
the desert on his camel as of yore; his stately caravans, laden
with precious freight, still make traffic through all that wide
domain, and his proud conquerors have not disdained, in this
particular, to follow in his footsteps.

America had no original domestic quadruped but a species
of elk, the llama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or
buffalo, The horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and
the hog, were brought over by the early settlers. The indis-
pensable benefits we have derived from their introduction,
domestication, and large increase in our country, are recognized
by all. Yet the camel is a more useful animal, more hardy, and
will bear ocean transportation better, than any of these other.
animals.

This latter point is well established by the testimony of Por-
ter, Wayne, Heap, and many others; and my own experience
in the shipment of animals for many years has led me to the
same conclusion.

Usr in Texas AND OVERLAND.

That the camel finds himself at home in the local conditions
of our climate and soil, and does not deteriorate, but rather
improves in health and vigor by a change of domicil, has been
thoroughly demonstrated by the result of the experiments made
by the United States Government, in 1855, ’56, and ’57..

The report of Captain Beale, of the United States Army, to
the Secretary of War, of an overland trip with camels, carrying
seven hundred pounds each, from Texas to California, in 1857,
is very full and satisfactory; but I do not happen to have it by
me to quote from at this time.

The following extracts are from the official reports of Major

USE IN TEXAS AND OVERLAND. OT

Wayne, dated respectively September 24th, and November 5th,
1856, and February 21st, 1857, and will be found sufliciently
comprehensive and conclusive :—

“On the 28th of August I sent down six camels, under my
clerk, Mr. Ray, to San Antonio, for oats, in company with three
wagons from this post (Camp Verde, Texas). The camels
could, as it turned out, have gone down leisurely in two days,
but, governed in their movements by the wagons (though they
were empty), they went down in three, the wagons being re-
strained in their march by the want of water along the route.
On Monday, September Ist, Captain McLean, assistant quarter-
master at San Antonio, sent back the camels to me at 12 m.,,
with 3,648 pounds of oats, an average of 608 pounds to each
animal. At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, the 3d of September, the
camels were again in this camp, and had delivered their loads,
having travelled leisurely, and with much less weight than they
could easily have transported. On Tuesday, September 2d, the
wagons were returned by Captain McLean at 12m. On Sat-
urday, September 6th, they arrived in camp at 123 p. m., only
one wagon carrying 1,900 pounds, and the others averaging
about 1,800 pounds; the loads that experience has taught can
be safely transported in them over this rough and thinly-settled
country. From this trial, it will be seen that the six camels
transported over the same ground and distance the weight of two
six-mule wagons, and gained on them 423 hours in time. Re-
member, moreover, that the keep of a camel is about the same
as that of a mule (if any difference, it being rather in favor of
the camel, as it eats no more, and ruminates like a cow), and
that there is no heavy outlay for wagons, harness, etc. (the only
equipment being a very rude pack-saddle, that can be made by
the camel-drivers themselves), and you will have all the data
necessary for a comparison of the two methods of transportation
just related. * bs a * =

“On Saturday night, October 4th, and Sunday morning, it
rained in San Antonio heavily, wetting the roads deeply, and
making them muddy and boggy. Wagoning through such
mud is labor lost, for the viscidity of this soil is such that it
packs firmly on the wheel, and as with each revolution a new layer
is taken up, the tire and felloes soon become incased in a thick

28 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

coating of pressed earth, rendering traction slow and painful.
Travelling in such roads, with any thing like a load in a wagon,
is out of the question. This condition of the road offered an
opportunity for another test,—the travelling of the camel in
muddy weather,—not contemplated by me when the caravan
left, but which the information and sagacity of Mr. Ray at
once embraced. Packing light loads upon the camels, he took
advantage of a temporary cessation of rain, between 12 m. and
1 p.m., on Sunday, the 5th of October, and commenced his
return to camp. The rain continued with slight intermissions,
but generally coming down in torrents; throughout Sunday
night and the succeeding Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday
evening, October 7th, the caravan reached camp at 7 P. m.,
and delivered 3,800 pounds of oats, and a few miscellaneous
stores that it had transported, the state of the roads having
impeded but little its progress. Experienced, disinterested
persons said, at the time, that loaded wagons could not have
travelled in such weather.”
ue % x # % % %

‘““ We have camels that for short distances will easily transport
twelve and fifteen hundred pounds, yet never but in one
instance has there been put upon them more than about six _
hundred pounds. The exception referred to was during my
stay in Indianola, and within the first month or six weeks after
landing. Needing hay at the camel-yard, I directed one of the
men to take a camel to the quartermaster’s forage-house and
bring up four bales. Desirous of seeing what effect it would
produce upon the public mind, I mingled in the crowd that
gathered round the camel as it came into town. When made
to kneel down to receive its load, and two bales, weighing in
all 613 pounds, were packed on, I heard doubts expressed
around me as to the animal’s ability to rise under them; when
two more bales were put on, making the gross weight of the
load 1,256 pounds, incredulity as to his ability to rise, much
less to carry it, found vent in positive assertion. To convey to
you the surprise and sudden change of sentiment when the
camel, at the signal, rose and walked off with his four bales
of hay, would be impossible. It is sufficient to say that I was
completely satisfied.. I would have put on two more bales—
about 1,800 pounds—but four bales were sufficient for my

MILITARY SERVICES. 29

purposes, and the animal had no particular effort (objection-
able after so long a sea voyage) to make under them.”

Muinirary SERVICEs.

Although traditionally a peaceful animal, lacking those fiery
attributes which Job bestows upon the war-horse, yet has the
camel occasionally rendered distinguished service in military
movements. They have been used for centuries by the Per-
sians in their wars against the Turks. Our officers who visited
the Crimea, in 1855, found them highly appreciated by the
British, who had previously used them in India for cavalry ser-
vice. The operation of the famous dromedary regiment, organ-
ized by the first Napoleon in Egypt, was:a brilliant success ;
and the recent experiments of the same nature in Algeria, are
said to have resulted in a manner entirely satisfactory to the
officers in charge. Whether they can be advantageously -sub-
stituted for, or used in connection with, the horse in the regular
military operations of our army, is an open question ; but there
is no doubt that, as an armed escort, they will render good ser-
vice in protecting our overland trains from Indian depreda-
tions.

“There are few more imposing spectacles,” says Marsh,
“than a body of armed men, advancing under the quick pace
of the trained dromedary ; and this sight, with the ability of the
animal to climb ascents impracticable to horses, and thus to
transport mountain howitzers, light artillery, stores, and other
military matériel into the heart of the mountains, would strike
with a salutary terror the Camanches, Lipaus, and other savage
tribes upon our borders.” And he thus sums up his qualifica-
tions for martial rank, which it will be seen are equally valua-
ble to him as a beast of burden.

*« Among the advantages of the camel for military purposes,”
he says, “‘ may be mentioned the economy of his original cost
as compared with the horse or mule, when once introduced and
fairly domesticated—the simplicity and cheapness of his saddle
and other furniture, which every soldier can manufacture for
himself; the exemption from the trouble and expense of pro-
viding for his sustenance, and from dressing, sheltering, or
shoeing him; his great docility, his general freedom from dis-
ease, his longevity, the magnitude of his burden, and the great

30 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

celerity of his movements; his extraordinary fearlessness ; the
safety of his rider, whether from falls or the viciousness of the
animal ; the economical value of his flesh, and the applicability
of his hair and skin to many purposes of military use or con-
venience; the resources which in extreme cases the milk might
furnish, and, finally, his great powers of abstinence from both
food and drink.”

ADAPTABILITY TO ouR Far West.

It would be idle now to speculate as to what would have
been the effect on our civilization, if Columbus, when he sailed
from Cadiz for Santo Domingo, on the 25th of September, 1498,
on his second voyage of exploration, taking with him horses,
cattle, and other domestic animals wherewith to stock the
New World, had taken some camels also. With the increased
facilities they would have afforded us for a larger development,
might we not have become more of a pastoral people—less
selfish and greedy of gain, taking more liberal and comprehen-
sive views of human affairs? Might not our country have been
more fully explored, and to an extent settled, and farther ad-
vanced towards its sublime destiny? And what would have
been the effect on the Indian question? Should we have used
the camel exclusively to hunt that stricken and decaying people ~
more swiftly to their death ; or would he have been, on the other
hand, a civilizing element in their midst, winning them by his
morale to more useful and tranquillizing pursuits, a means of
utilizing rather than exterminating them ?

All the local conditions and influences of our Western coun-
try indicate most unmistakably the camel as its appropriate
denizen. Take a map of the world on the Mercator projection,
and you will see that the parallels on which he is used to the
greatest extent, and to the best advantage in the Old World,
are precisely those on which we propose to employ him in the
New. The great geological, climatic, and topographical features
of the eastern and western parallels are sufficiently similar.
Both on the Great Plains which form the eastern slope of the
Rocky Mountains, embracing nearly the entire valley of the
Rio Grande, and extending northward beyond the northern
boundary of the United States, and in the Great Basin of the
interior, between the Rockys and the Sierra Nevada, there are

ADAPTABILITY TO OUR FAR WEST: 31

large tracts of country closely resembling the deserts of Africa
and Arabia. None of our mountain passes are more rugged or
steeper, or more subjected to the obstacles of snow and ice,
than those of China, Tartary, or northern Africa. Some have
suggested that the greater humidity of portions of our con-
tinent, giving more of an alluvial character to the soil, would
be found objectionable. Mud is always an impediment to
travel, but I think the extracts which I have read from Major
Wayne’s Reports show that the camel is by no means thrown
hors de combat from this cause; at all events, we may safely
affirm that even under these conditions, least favorable to his
character and capacity—-which are, by the way, the exception
and not the rule—the camel will be found to possess many ad-
vantages over the loaded team as a means of transportation.

That this useful and valuable animal has not hitherto been
introduced into our continent, may be attributed partly to the
fact that our population has been made up almost exclusively
from peoples not familiar with the uses of the camel—the over-
flow, as it were, of the denser countries of Western and Central
Europe. No great territorial nation has sent us any contribu-
tion to speak of; and, besides, our previous requirements may
not seem to have imperatively demanded the use of any other
means of conveyance than those which we found ready pro-
vided to our hands. But with the gold discoveries in California,
and the subsequent discoveries of the precious metals in our in-
land Territories, the aspect of the case is changed: other and
better facilities are called for, and must be had. In this view
of the question, I think I hazard little in repeating a prediction
which I made in a work published in Boston in 1851, that ‘ the
camel will yet be domesticated and bred in our Western States
and Territories as the horse, the mule, and the ox now are, and
will doubtless do more towards extending the outskirts of our
civilization than all other appliances to boot.”

There, in the golden wake of sunset, lies the peerless West,
offering us with lavish hand her priceless treasures. There she
stands like a queen, flushed and proud, arrayed in garments of
silver with ornaments of gold, waiting to be crowned with the
glory of human population, like Memnon’s statue in the wilder-
ness, waiting for the dawn of human industry to become musical
with its hum. Macaulay, at the close of his essay on “ Mitford’s

32 THE USES OF THE CAMEL.

Greece,” with a touching sadness that partakes of the sublime,
suggests the possibility of a coming period, “ when civilization
and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in some distant con-
tinent, and the sceptre shall have passed away from England ;
when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain
labor to decipher, on some mouldering pedestal, the name of
her proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some
misshapen idol over the ruined dome of her proudest temple,
and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the.
river of ten thousand masts.”

This is the poetical foreshadowing of a fact already in pro-
cess of being accomplished. A great continental empire is
growing up here, with the Rocky Mountains for its massive
and towering centre. Let us follow up the fancy of Macaulay
and divest it of its gloom. Let us imagine some future traveller,
standing upon our topmost central peak, gazing on either hand
upon the wide expanse ‘of mountain, valley, and broad sweep-
ing plain, peopled with a healthy, hardy race, living near their
mother earth, and drawing vigorous sustenance from her ample
bosom ; inheritors of earth’s last, best civilization, yet possessing
the simple tastes and primitive habits of the patriarchs; with |
streams of travel flowing in all directions, the iron horse rush-—
ing along the narrow ribbon of his appointed course, the plains
whitened with tented wagons, and, coming’ from farther dis-
tances along their broader roads, caravans of camels—and he
shall behold a mighty and Heaven-favored land, fair to look
upon, chastened and purified, within its wide realm a compe-
tence and a home for the migratory hosts from every clime, |
and throughout all its radiant borders FREEDOM FOREVERMORE. -

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