190 WILD ANIMALS. 



Long ages of servitude and harsh, treatment have made the 

 camel anything but a docile or intelligent animal. Yet that he 

 was not always the stupid, obstinate, revengeful brute which 

 modern writers now say he is, becomes evident from the accounts 

 given of him in ancient histories, for we do not read of the camel 

 being described in any way different to the horse or dog, although 

 the old travellers were not prone to under-estimate the bad or 

 savage qualities of the animals they described, but had rather a 

 tendency to exaggerate these points on purpose to arouse interest 

 and fear. In Gesner's account we read : " The epithets given to 

 this beast are not. many among authors, for he is termed by them 

 rough, deformed, and thirsting." 



John Leo, surnamed Africanus, the Moorish geographer of the 

 sixteenth century,^ writes : " A camel is a gentle and pleasant 

 tame beast, whereof there are plenty, especially in the deserts of 

 Lybia, Numidia, and Barbary, by which Africans estimate their 

 own wealth; for when they contend who is the richest prince or 

 ■ nobleman among them, they say he was worth or hath so many 

 thousand camels, and not so many thousand crowns. And he 

 that hath camels liveth among them like a gentleman, because he 

 can at his pleasure travel into the deserts, and fetch merchandise 

 from far, which the greatest prince or nobleman cannot without 

 them, by reason of the drought of those places." 



It would only be natural that, after the ages of ill-usage and 

 cruelty to which they have been subjected, their breed as well as 

 their temper and intelligence should degenerate. 



Mr. Palgrave, in common with many modern travellers, found 

 the camel, to his surprise, anything but the patient servant 



" "Purchas, his Pilgrimes," 1655. This Leo appears to have had a most 

 adventurous life. Born in Grenada, he left that city for Africa, from whence he 

 procured his surname, on it being conquered by JTerdinand and Isabella in 1492. 

 He learnt the Arabic language so thoroughly that he wrote a book in it. After 

 travelling in Europe, Asia, and Africa, he fell into the hands of pirates on the island 

 of Zerb and was sold as a slave. His master presented him to Leo X. That Pope, 

 finding out the knowledge and learning possessed by his slave, received him graciously, 

 converted him, and gave him his own names in baptism. Before Leo's death he 

 mastered the Italian language and translated into it his African work, from whence 

 both the Latin and French versions of his travels were made. 



