MARCHING AND CARRYING POWER 187 



hours a day, but except in cases of necessity it is 

 advisable not to force them beyond this, unless you 

 wish to injure them. After work of this kind they 

 should be turned out to graze, and have a complete 

 rest for a week to ten days, or longer, according to the 

 state they arrive in. Ensor says that ' the camel is 

 essentially a traveller, and rest for him is an abnormal 

 condition,' and with the former portion of this state- 

 ment I quite agree. There are no better roadsters in 

 their own respective lines than the baggager and Sawari. 

 In proper hands the former will plod, the latter swing, 

 along day after day, week after week, and month after 

 month ; but they must have food and they must have 

 rest. The Kababish to whom I have more than once 

 alluded when conveying our stores from Korti to 

 Gakdool, a distance of 100 miles, used to get to the 

 latter place on the fifth day, and the average weight of 

 their loads was 300 Ib. They always drove their 

 camels like a flock of sheep, spread well out over the 

 desert, grazing them as they went hence paucity of 

 drivers ; and it was only on these conditions that they 

 should be left entirely to themselves, without Euro- 

 pean supervision that they undertook to hire out their 

 animals. In open country the Bisharin and other 

 nomadic tribes also drive their camels in line, and not 

 in single file, and allow them to pick up what they can 

 as they stalk along ; and the average distance at which 

 their caravans travel is twenty miles a day, dependent 

 altogether on circumstances, the nature of the grazing 

 and water supply being considered first and foremost, 

 so that one march might be thirty miles long and 

 another only ten. The Arab tribes in Algeria, and the 



