20 THE CAMEL 



and gauntness ; his strange-looking head with small 

 rounded ears perched on the thin, curved, elongated 

 neck ; his thick, mobile upper lip, slit in two and always 

 twitching with a half-deprecating, half-cynical curl ; the 

 fringe of eyelash, long and thick, surmounted by a 

 shaggy, beetling brow, a natural provision against the 

 blinding glare of the fierce sun, shading eyes which the 

 most critical must admit are large and soft and beautiful, 

 if a trifle too prominent a beauty which forms a re- 

 deeming figure to the animal's otherwise uncouth appear- 

 ance. His large body well ribbed up in front and falling 

 away behind, overtopped by a big hairy hump, which 

 looks more like an exaggerated excrescence than any- 

 thing else, and the short, almost stumpy tail which 

 bears a terminal switch ; his long, lanky legs meagre 

 extremities to such a great frame at the end of which 

 are great shapeless feet. His sprawling, shambling walk 

 as he shuffles along is familiar to many, and has always 

 made him appear to me in the light of a self-imposed 

 caricature on nature, just as in the arboreal world the 

 baobab-tree has similarly struck me. It is a curious 

 coincidence, too, that he is more difficult to delineate 

 than any other four-footed beast. 



He is provided by Nature with a flat padded foot, 

 which enables him to move over loose and heavy sand, 

 but he is tolerant of shingle and rough ground. During 

 progression, unlike the horse, he moves both legs on 

 the same side simultaneously (first the near fore and 

 hind leg together, then the off fore and hind, and so 

 on), which gives his movements a jolting, swinging 

 motion when you are riding him, something like that 

 of a ship rolling and pitching at sea, and that accounts 



