ORDER RUM1NANTIA. 45 



stantly perish under their loads, it must be inferred that 

 this obstinate refusal arises from the presentiment of 

 their inability to perform the task imposed : the con- 

 viction of which is manifested to them when endeavouring 

 to get the hind legs under them in rising, for they feel the 

 weight in the first instance upon the loins, where Camels 

 are weakest. Under the load which they will carry with- 

 out compulsion, it is often observed in caravans, when the 

 fatigue becomes excessive, that the Camels begin to per- 

 spire profusely, and if in this state they cannot be speedily 

 relieved, they soon drop, and discharging a quantity of 

 water from the mouth, expire. Their usual progress in 

 travelling depends on the assigned stations, which vary 

 according to local circumstances, mostly dependent upon 

 the presence of water ; they are in general from sixteen to 

 twenty four miles distant from each other, and the enor- 

 mous weight of one thousand and twelve hundred pounds 

 imposed, is not what is actually carried on the road, but ge- 

 nerally superadded before they enter towns or places where 

 duties are levied by the load, which causes the drivers to 

 pack the burdens of three upon two camels until they have 

 passed the custom-house, the light camels paying none. But 

 for speed, and on urgent occasions of danger, the Arabs of 

 the desert will go fifty miles and more in twenty-four hours, 

 with their loaded household camels ; and the variety of the 

 true Dromedary, or Mahairy, carrying only a single man, 

 moves with wonderful rapidity, leaving a caravan, to re- 

 connoitre in the desert as far as the eye can reach, and re- 

 turning in an incredibly short space of time; these will 

 traverse for several successive days spaces from seventy 

 to one hundred miles in the twenty-four hours*. The 



* It is somewhere asserted that a Bedouin carried a letter upon 

 a Mahairy in four days from Cairo to Mecca, a distance of at least 

 six hundred miles. If the fact be true, it can only have been 

 effected, we think, by the Arab having somewhere a relay. 



