WILD CAMELS IN EUROPE. 95 



writer at the apparition of the long-legged, long-necked, 

 hump-backed pair; but there was no room for mistake, 

 for a camel is like nothing else in creation. 



The camels appeared to have no great pace, and for 

 some distance I pursued them, but it was hopeless. Be- 

 tween us lay an arroyo, one of those wide stagnant 

 channels that in spring intersect the dry parts of the 

 marisma in all directions ; and before getting clear of this, 

 splashing through some hundred yards of mud and water, 

 the bactrians were far away, scudding across a dead- 

 level plain that extended to the horizon. 



I had heard on my first visit to this wilderness (in 

 1872) of the existence of camels therein, and that they 

 had lived there wild for forty years or more, but was as 

 incredulous as perhaps some of our present readers may 

 be, and as some certainly were when I first mentioned the 

 fact in the Ibis, in January, 1884, though then corroborated 

 by Mr. Howard Saunders, one of the joint-editors, in the 

 following foot-note : — " I saw a small herd of these feral 

 camels in the Coto de Dofiana, on the 3rd of May, 1868 ; 

 but, finding that my statement as to the breeding of the 

 crane in that neighbourhood was received with much 

 incredulity, I kept the apparition of the camels to myself. 

 I possessed the eggs of the crane to convince the sceptics, 

 but I could not have produced a camel." Shortly after- 

 wards the statement was somewhat contemptuously criti- 

 cized by an anonymous writer in The Field, who claimed 

 to be himself acquainted with the marismas, and ridiculed 

 the idea of camels existing there in a wild state. " The 

 startling statement," wrote Inhlwati, " as to the existence 

 of wild camels in the neighbourhood of Seville or Lebrija 

 has taken me and my friends who know that country well 

 by utter surprise ; and that camels should have been roam- 

 ing about there and breeding, so to speak, as perfectly wild 

 animals in a state of nature, seems to us utterly in- 

 credible. 



" The marismas in the summer time are covered with 

 cattle, and of course they are accompanied everywhere by 

 their herdsmen ; and, so to speak, every foot of open ground 



