10 



2. THEIK STRENGTH, SPEED, AND ENDURANCE. 



No animal can compete with the camel for strength and endurance. The Africaa 

 traveller, Shaw, relates that on his journey to Mount Sinai, which was over a very 

 hot and stony region, though each of his camels carried seven quintals (784 pounds), 

 he travelled ten, and sometimes fifteen hours a day, at the rate of three miles an 



hour. 



Another traveller (F. A. Neale, Eight Years ni Syria) states: " The Turcoman 

 camel, a much finer animal than the Syrian, will carry, equally poised, two bales, 

 •weighing together half a ton." 



Hue remarks : " Although he costs so little to nouri.sh, the camel can be properly 

 appreciated in those countries only where he is in constant use. His ordinary load 

 is from seven to eight huudred pounds, and with this burden he can travel about 

 ten leagues a day." 



In Barbary, they carry from 550 to 600 pounds, and travel forty miles a day. 



8. THE LONGEVITY OF THE CAMEL. 



The naturalist, Buffon, states that camels live from forty to fifty years. In Tunis, 

 where I had daily opportunities of seeing them, they live fully fifty years. Mr. 

 Hue says that they retain their vigor for many years, and if they are allowed a short 

 period of rest in the spring, to pasture, they are of good service for fifty years 



The camel, therefore, possesses more useful qualities than any otlier animal sub- 

 jected to the use of man. His strength is such that he can carry more than three 

 mule loads, though he requires as little nourishment as the ass. 



In Asia and Africa, the journeys of the caravans are often from two thousand to 

 three thousand miles in length, during which they average from thirty to thirty-five ' 

 miles a day. ^ 



They are remarkably docile and obedient to their masters ; lie down to be loaded 

 and unloaded ; at night, sleep crouched in a circle around the encampment. They 

 rarely stray away, nor are they, as mules, liable to be frightened ; it would be diffi- 

 cult — nay, impossible — to stampede a caravan of camels. When turned out to 

 pasture, they oat in an hour as much as serves them to ruminate the whole night, 

 and to nourish ihem during twenty-four hours. 



The female camel furni^ies excellent milk longer than the cow, upon which the 

 Arabs often subsist during their long journeys. Their hair, which is renewed an- ! 

 nually, is more in request than the finest wool ; the fleece weighs about ten pounds. 



The dromedary possesses the same qualities as the camel, as regards abstemious- ' 

 ness, docility, &c., to which he adds much greater speed and endurance. 



The dromedary is a much taller and finer-shaped animal thdn the camel. The I 

 Arabs assert that he can travel as far in one day as one of their best horses can in 

 four. They are so hardy, that they travel in the desert for eight or ten days at the 

 rate of from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty miles per day, 

 during which time they require very little food or water. I saw a party of Arabs, 

 mounted on dromedaries, arrive in Tunis in four days from Tripoli, a distance of 

 six hundred miles. 



In these journeys, they do not bear heavy loads, but carr}' a man, with his arms 

 and provisions, which are equivalent to about two hundred and fifty pounds. 



General Yusuf, of the French army, travelled from Blidah, a town in Uie interior i 



