582 INTRODUCTION OF CAMELS. 
them when they cannot get grass or corn; yet they never 
thrive on them, but, on the contrary, lose flesh. Other pecu- 
liarities are the salines and salt lakes, which abound on the 
arid plains throughout the table-lands, as well as on the slopes 
towards both oceans. When driven to great extremities, 
mules will sometimes drink this salt or brackish water ; but I 
have driven them fifty or sixty miles without water, yet on 
reaching a saline not one in ten would touch it. To camels 
brackish water is as acceptable as if from the purest foun- 
tains. _ 
“Frugal in appetite,” says Mr. Gliddon, “ the camel’s epi- 
curism never rises above a sufficiency of split beans and chop- 
ped straw ; but while in the vernal season he relishes clover 
and grasses, his massive grinders, cutting like cold chisels, 
masticate alike the dryest stalks or the toughest thorns ; and 
his ‘ cast-iron’ stomach digests and converts into nutriment 
stems otherwise so devoid of succulence, that the camel sub- 
sists where every other gramnivore must starve. When neces- 
sary, he can go five days without water.” 
With us, the food we shall have to give them will be vari- 
ous kinds of grasses, in particular those popularly known as 
mezquit, the grama, and the buffalo grass, which grow on the 
prairies, the elevated table-lands, and the mountains. For 
more solid food we have the Mexican frijoles and maize, with 
other cereals. On the deserts there are plants which mules 
will not touch, which the camel would doubtless feed upon. 
With regard to the capacities of camels for carrying bur- 
dens all depends upon the breed, “Six hundred pounds,” 
says Mr, Gliddon, “is a fair estimate for the best Arabian 
well fed animal, with which he will travel twenty miles a day. 
The Bactrian camel, which is less capable of enduring heat, 
will carry ordinarily eight hundred pounds. Dromedaries, 
which are not employed for carrying burdens, but for riding, 
can travel freely fifty or sixty miles every twenty-four hours 
(including eight to twelve hours for rest and stoppage), and 
