48 THE CAMEL 



gambols indulged in by other young animals. It is a 

 case of the old saw, ' All work and no play ' in other 

 words, domestication which has kept his nose so 

 unremittingly to the grindstone, that has evidently 

 altogether done for him. 



Patience As to his patience, no one who has worked with 



him as I have done struggling against almost impossible 

 difficulties in long, tedious campaigns will hesitate to 

 award the palm to the camel above any other animal. 

 See him as he stalks along, with a mingled air of dis- 

 contented resignation, or resigned discontent (if I may 

 use a seeming paradox), and as if life had no zest or 

 flavour for him, but was a stern necessity which 

 had to be borne ! Or again, look at him standing 

 quietly under a heavy load for hours at a stretch, im- 

 movable as a statue, the very personification of patience, 

 the truest type of it on earth, and a splendid example 

 to impulsive, impetuous man, who drives him to suit 

 his own aims and ends until he falls down from sheer 

 exhaustion to die. 



Submis- And not only is he patient, but submissive as a 



rule, exceptionally so nor is he easily provoked. It is 

 only when he is cruelly treated and habitually thwarted 

 that he becomes exasperated and assumes the offensive, 

 and then only after a long and constant course of such 

 treatment. Once he does become unruly and diso- 

 bedient it is extremely difficult to manage him, and as 

 a rule he gets beyond all control ; but these cases 

 luckily are few and far between, in spite of the atro- 

 cious treatment he generally receives not usually at 

 the hands of owners and breeders, be it remembered, 

 but from soldiers, British and native, and always from 



sion 



