SPEED AND GAIT. 127 



seven days ; and on one occasion, by means of 

 regular relays, Mehemet All sent an express to 

 Ibrahim Pasha, from Cairo to Antioch, five 

 hundred and sixty miles, in five days and a half. 

 But the most remarkable long journey on record 

 is that of Col. Chesney, of the British army, 

 who rode with three companions, and without 

 change of camel, from Basrah to Damascus, a 

 distance of nine hundred and sixty miles, in 

 nineteen days and three or four hours, thus 

 averaging fifty miles per day, the animals having 

 no food but such as they gathered for themselves 

 during the halts of the party. These dromedaries 

 averaged forty-five steps a minute, with a length 

 of step of six feet five inches, giving a speed of 

 about three and one third miles the hour. 



In an appendix to the work of Carbuccia, 

 Jomard affirms that a detachment of the cele- 

 brated dromedary regiment in the French army 

 of Egypt, marched from Cairo to El-Arish, from 

 El-Arish to Suez, from Suez to Cairo, and from 

 Cairo to Pelusium, a distance in all of not less 

 than six hundred miles in eight days^ and he 

 adds that the ordinary day's march of the regi- 

 ment was thirty French leagues, or about seventy- 

 five miles, without a halt. These extraordinary 

 statements rest on the testimony of a single in- 

 dividual, and though the corps was composed 

 wholly of picked animals and picked men, and 



