276 Unexplored Spain 



the bactriaus were set free in the marisma, wherein they have 

 since lived at large and bred under wholly wild conditions for well- 

 nigh a century. 



We admit that a statement of the existence of wild camels 

 in these watery wildernesses of Spain — flooded during great part 

 of the year — is difficult to accept. The camel is inseparably 

 associated with the most arid deserts of earth, with sun-scorched 

 Sahara, Arabia Petraea, and waterless tropical regions. Its 

 physical economy is expressly adapted for such habitats — the 

 huge padded feet and seven-chambered stomach that will sustain 

 it for days without drinking. Yet the reader was asked to 

 believe that this specialised desert-dweller had calmly accepted a 

 condition of life diametrically reversed, and not only lives, but 

 breeds and flourishes amidst knee-deep swamp. 



At the period of which we write the camel was not known to 

 exist on earth in a wild state, and physical disabilities were 

 alleged which would have precluded such a possibility. During 

 historic times it had never been described save only as a beast of 

 burden, the slave of man — and a savage, intractable slave at that. 

 A little later, however, the Kussian exj^lorer, Prejevalsky, met 

 with wild camels roaming over the Kumtagh deserts of Turkestan, 

 and in Tibet Sven Hedin has since shown the two-humped 

 camel to be one of the normal wild beasts of the Central Asian 

 table-lands. 



Wild camels in Europe represented a considerable draft upon 

 the credulity of readers ; and a chorus of ridicule was poured upon 

 the statement. Men who had " lived in Spain for years " — a 

 foreign consul at Seville, engineers employed in reclaiming 

 marismas (somewhere else) — all rushed into print to attest the 

 absurdity of the idea. Limited experience was mistaken for 

 complete knowledge ! Similar treatment was accorded to our 

 observation of pelicans in Denmark. Ornithologists of Copen- 

 hagen insinuated we did not know^ pelicans from seagulls ; yet the 

 Danish pelicans are as well known to the Jutlander fisher-folk as 

 are the Spanish camels to the herdsmen and fowlers of the 

 marisma. Knowledge is no monopoly of high places. 



The Spanish camels spend their lives exclusively in the open 

 marisma, pasturing on the vetas, or higher-lying areas, and 

 passing from islet to islet, though the intervening water be 

 three feet deep. We have watched them grazing on subaquatic 



