Wild Camels 279 



detection by Civil Guards and douaniers. The men then sail down the 

 river and sell the meat at San Lucar as venison. 



When in the niarisnia in 1892 I met one day a troop of forty 

 animals — some old males, their huge bodies covered with thick hair like 

 blankets ; there were also females followed by their young — fantastic of 

 appearance, owing to the disproportionate length of their legs, but 

 galloping and frisking around their mothers as they had done since birth. 



Next day my companion and I took lassoes ; we encountered a huge 

 old male, singly, which trotted and galloped round our horses, terrifying 

 the poor beasts to such an extent that we could not come near the camel. 

 At length after a fifty -minutes' chase, in crossing a part where the mud 

 was soft and the surface much broken up by cattle coming to drink, we 

 overtook him. Thanks to my horse having less fear than the other, I 

 was presently able to tlirow a lasso around the camel, my companion 

 hauling taut the rope to hold the prisoner fast. The great brute proved 

 very active, defending himself with his immense flat feet, which he used 

 as clubs, and, moreover, he bit, and the bite of a camel is venomous. 

 Ultimately I succeeded in getting a second rope around him and 

 dragging him to the ground, where he lay like the domestic camel. The 

 photographs illustrate this episode. 



Old males frequently have the hair very ragged and scant, especially 

 on hind-quarters, and on their knees are great callosities. The truly wild 

 camels of the marisma are fast disappearing. A friend has furnished 

 me with the approximate number now remaining absolutely wild, viz. 

 fifteen or sixteen near La ]\Iacha fronting the Palace of Tisana, besides 

 five enclosed in the Cerrado de Matas Gordas, near the Palacio del Eey, 

 and belonging to Madame La Condesa de Paris. 



It was owing to the rapid decrease in their numbers, and in order to 

 save them from extinction, that the Condesa had these enclosures, known 

 as Matas Gordas, prepared. They contain excellent pasturage, besides some 

 extent of brushwood ; yet the enclosed camels do not flourish, nor have 

 they ever bred. Big as the enclosures are, yet the area may be too 

 restricted for them ; or it may be the disturbance due to the i)resence of 

 cattle and herdsmen (since the cerrados are let for grazing) that explains 

 this failure ; or possibly the camels resent being enclosed at all. At any 

 rate the spectacle of troops of camels rushing wildly forward in all direc- 

 tions is passing away all too quickly, and soon nothing but the legend 

 will remain. 



Truly it is melancholy that the wild camels should be allowed utterly 

 to disappear, representing, as they do, so extraordinary a fact in zoological 

 science. 



Our friend Mr. William Garvey tells us that in the summer 

 of 1907, while returning from Villamanrique, crossing the dry 

 marisma in his automobile, he saw three camels. He drove 



