306 THE CAMEL 



not due to scarcity of animals anyone with a know- 

 ledge of the country would at once admit, and dismiss 

 the very idea as a thought of the idlest description. 

 That the price had nothing to do with it can also 

 be put to one side as equally idle, considering we were 

 paying treble the ordinary value for a common bag- 

 gager. Nor was it due to animosity ; for the great 

 Bedawin tribes in Upper and Lower Egypt, if not 

 in sympathy with us, were at all events not openly 

 hostile or even neutrally inimical to us. Besides, this 

 would not have influenced them in any way ; for though 

 co-religionists with the Dervishes, there their sympathy 

 ended ; and being an avaricious, grasping lot, they 

 would not have lost an opportunity to sell, and so make 

 money. Economy on the part of the authorities not to 

 spend more than a certain amount on transport may 

 have had a little to do with it ; but in reality the deep- 

 rooted aversion, on the same grounds as above, that all 

 camel owners have of parting with any animals but 

 those which are useless to them, had much more to say 

 to it. This, at least, is the only reasonable conclusion 

 that I can come to, and ought to be a warning to us for 

 future guidance. 



Should, however, no attempt be made to form a 

 Eemount Establishment a formation which cannot be 

 too strongly advocated for the purpose of breeding 

 camels, and of instructing soldiers in all their habits and 

 characteristics from birth to maturity ; if we prefer to 

 remain in a state of unpreparedness the same unsys- 

 tematic state that we always have been in I can arrive 

 at no other conclusion but what we came to in the first 

 few lines of this chapter, that purchasing officers will 



