LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



39 



they, on the contrary, march with a wide-extended 

 front. Caravans from Bagdad to Aleppo and Da- 

 mascus have heen said to consist of camels march- 

 ing abreast of each other, and sometimes extend- 

 ing over a space of more than a mile. 



Old authors notice the training of camels to 

 move in measured time by placing the animal on 

 gradually heated plates, and at the same time 

 sounding a musical instrument. The carriage of 

 the head, so frequent a theme of eulogy with the 

 Arabian poets, is due to the atlas, which, besides 

 its articulation with the occipital condyles, affords 

 support to the lower jaw. The Arabs, who have 

 among them most imaginative and finished impro- 

 visator^ compare the elegant movements of a beau- 

 tiful bride to those of a young camel. The 

 Thousand and One Nights, like most clever fables, 

 have some foundation in fact, as is well known to 

 the friends of the Arabian man of rank, who keeps 

 his professed story-teller as an indispensable part 

 of his establishment. African travellers relate 

 that these friends will assemble before his tent, or 

 on the platform with which the house of a Moorish 

 Arab is roofed, and there listen, night after night, 

 to a consecutive history, related for sixty or even 

 one hundred nights in succession. The listeners 

 on such occasions have all the air of being spell- 

 bound, especially while hearing some of their 

 native songs, which are frequently extemporized, 

 full of fire, and appealing with irresistible force 

 .to the passions. "I have seen," says Major 

 Denham, " a circle of Arabs straining their eyes 

 with a fixed attention at one moment and bursting 

 with loud laughter ; at the next melting into tears 

 and clasping their hands in all the ecstasy of 

 grief and sympathy." The good camel-driver 

 frequently cheers his beast with one of these mel- 

 odies, and divides his barley-cake with those 



Mute companions of his toils, that hear 

 In all his griefs a more than equal share. 

 There, where no springs in summers die away, 

 Or moss-crowned fountains mitigate the day. 



But sometimes the poor slave suffers dreadfully 

 i'rom the zealous ignorance of those who have the 

 care of him. The attention of Bishop Heber, 

 when on his journey to Cawnpoor, was attracted 

 by the dreadful groans of one of the baggage- 

 camels. He went to the spot, and found that two 

 of the camel-drivers had bound its legs in a kneel- 

 ing posture, so that it could not stir, and were 

 burning it with hot irons in all the fleshy and 

 cartilaginous parts of its body. The good bishop 

 inquired what they were doing, and was answered 

 that the camel had a fever and wind, and would 

 die if they did not so treat it ; and die it did, 

 after all, secundum artem. Our French neighbors 

 love to be systematic, and thus classify the helpers 

 of men : Le medecin qui guerit he is very rare ; 

 Le medecin qui attend la guerison much more 

 Common, but still comparatively rare ; and Le 

 widecin qui tue. The camel-doctors appear to 

 iiave belonged to the last and most numerous class, 

 hough the treatment seems to have been somewhat 

 imilar to that practised on Rodin, for cholera, with 



success. Immersion in water seems to be most 

 injurious to the camel ; and after being compelled 

 to pass through rivers, disease frequently super- 

 venes. It also appears to be liable to intoxication 

 without drinking stimulating liquors. " Several 

 of our camels," says Dr. Oudney, " are drunk 

 to-day. Their eyes are heavy, and want anima- 

 tion ; gait staggering, and every now and then 

 falling as a man in a state of intoxication." This 

 arose, according to the doctor, from eating dates 

 after drinking water ; and he accounts for the 

 effect on the animal by the probable passing of the 

 fruit into the spirituous fermentation in its stomach 

 that wonderful stomach, which contains a series 

 of reservoirs to enable the desert ship to pursue 

 its voyage over the trackless and arid sands. 

 Yes, it is so. Doubts have been entertained upon 

 the authority of a celebrated name, for it has been 

 stated by a distinguished comparative anatomist* 

 that John Hunter did not give credit to this asser- 

 tion. But upon looking to the source and, as 

 Dr. Johnson said of conversation, it is of primary 

 consequence in appreciating information to ascer- 

 tain whether it comes from a spring or a reservoir 

 we find that Dr. Patrick Russell, the writer on 

 whom Sir Everard depended for this contradiction 

 of a generally received notion, states in the appen- 

 dix to his brother's History of Aleppo, that water, 

 in cases of distress, is taken from the camel's 

 stomach, and that it is a fact neither doubted in 

 Syria nor considered strange. The doctor con- 

 fesses that he never was himself in a caravan re- 

 duced to such an expedient, but he adds that he 

 has no reason to distrust the report of others, par- 

 ticularly of the Arabs ; and he refers to the his- 

 torian Beidawi, who, in relating' the prophet's 

 expedition to Tabuc against the Greeks, observes 

 that, among other miseries of the army, the bel- 

 ligerents were reduced to the extremity of slaying 

 their camels to quench their thirst with the water 

 contained in those animated water-skins. But fur- 

 ther, the doctor records that on his return from 

 the East Indies, in 1789, having heard accidentally 

 that his friend Mr. John Hunter had dissected a 

 camel, and was supposed to have expressed an 

 opinion that the animal's power of preserving 

 water in its stomach was rather improbable, he 

 took an opportunity of conversing with that illus- 

 trious physiologist on the subject, when, he says, 

 to the best of his recollection, John Hunter told 

 him that he by no means drew any such absolute 

 inference from his dissection ; that he saw no 

 reason for assigning more than four stomachs to 

 the camel, though he could conceive that water 

 might be found in the paunch little impregnated 

 with the dry provender of the desert, and readily 

 separating or draining from it. The doctor then 

 goes into anatomical detail, and those who wish to 

 follow him have only to go to the Museum of the 

 College of Surgeons of London the great John 

 Hunter's great monument where they will find 

 the reticulum, or water bag of the camel, with 



* Sir Everard Home. 



