142 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



forage. It could also endure better than the horse or mule the ex- 

 tremes of heat and cold in this western region. The experience of 

 other peoples had proved the value of the camel. In northern Africa 

 and over the greater part of Asia the animal had always been the beast 

 of burden — the most important agent of transportation. In climate 

 and physical geography our western frontiers were similar to the re- 

 gions which were the home of the camel. 



Camels had been used in America, but not in large numbers. The 

 Spaniards had imported them into Cuba and South America for use in 

 transporting ore from the mines to the coast, but this experiment had 

 not been a success. In 1701 some camels were brought to Virginia, 

 but nothing more is known of them. In Jamaica, where the English 

 tried them, the " chigger " or " chiqua," an insect which infested the 

 feet of the negroes, got into the feet of the camels, rendering them 

 unserviceable.^ 



The proposal to substitute camels for mules, horses and oxen in 

 transporting supplies for the army was first made by Major George 

 Hampton Crossman, a graduate of West Point, who was Zachary 

 Taylor's quartermaster in the Seminole war. The difficulty of trans- 

 porting supplies in Florida caused him to suggest that camels be intro- 

 duced and used for that purpose. He made a study of the subject, and 

 twenty years later was considered one of the authorities concerning 

 camels. 



Prominent among the officers who took an interest in the matter 

 was Major Henry Constantine Wayne, a Georgian, who during and 

 after the Mexican war, served in the Quai-termaster's Department. 

 He, with Senator Jefferson Davis, late colonel of the Mississippi Rifles, 

 made extensive studies in regard to the different breeds of the animal, 

 its habitat, the proper care of it, and its adaptability to the arid plains 

 of Texas, New Mexico and California. Wayne, in 1848, made a for- 

 mal recommendation to the War Department that camels be imported 

 for experimental purposes, and Davis, who was on the military affairs 

 committee, undertook to get an appropriation. In March, 1851, he 

 proposed to insert in the army appropriation bill an amendment pro- 

 viding the sum of $30,000 for the purchase of fifty camels, the hire of 

 ten Arabs, and other expenses. In support of his measure he made 

 a speech reviewing the history of the camel as a servant of man and 

 explaining the need for the animals in the west. There they would 

 be valuable, he said, not only because of their burden-bearing capacity 

 and their ability to live long without water and to eat scraggy bushes, 

 but because of their greater speed. The dromedaries, or swift camels, 

 could be used to mount cavalry and could carry small cannon, as had 

 been done in Persia and in Egypt. Senator Ewing at first objected 

 that the climate in the mountainous parts of the west was too cold for 



* Leonard, "The Camel," pp. 1-18; Marsh, "The Camel," chap. 16. 



