THE CAMEL. 17 



and the Sabaye, are very swift, and will keep up a trot of 

 eight or nine miles an hour for many hours together, and 

 have been known to perform a journey of thirty-five days' 

 caravan travelling in five days, doing six hundred and thirty 

 miles ; while Purchas says that camels will carry messages 

 from Timbuktu to places nine hundred miles distant in 

 less than eight days. These fast camels have but one 

 hump ; but this is also the case with some of the beasts of 

 burden. The object of these humps is not very clear, but 

 it is supposed that as the stomachs are a reservoir of water, 

 so the humps are natural portmanteaus in which the animals 

 convey a reserve of sustenance to draw upon in case of 

 need. It is, at any rate, certain that the fatty substance 

 composing the humps considerably diminishes and dwindles 

 when the animal is overworked. 



The camel has courage as well as endurance : it goes 

 on at its regular pace like a clock that is wound up, 

 until it stops suddenly and falls ; when it once does so, 

 nothing can induce it to endeavour to use its feet again 

 as long as man is present, although after the departure of 

 the caravan it has been known to get up to browse on the 

 bushes, and to find its way back to the wells from which 

 it started in the morning. It is very insensible to pain. 

 Count Gleichen, in his account of the Camel Corps in the 

 Nile Expedition, gives many instances of this ; notably the 

 case of one camel which, having had its lower jaw shot off 

 by a ball from an Arab matchlock, yet continued its journey 

 to the end of the day in apparent unconsciousness that 

 anything unusual had taken place. The one form of enjoy- 

 ment of the camel is that dear also to the donkey and horse 

 namely, a roll in the sand. This appears to afford it great 

 w*L.vin. 2 



