CHAPTER XXVII 
WILD CAMELS 
Ir was during these aquatic rides in search of the nesting- 
places of the flamingo that we first fell in with wild camels. 
Vague yarns, more or less circumstantial, that such animals 
wandered over the farther marismas, we remember as early as 
1872. The thing, however, had appeared too incredible for 
consideration—at any rate, we gave it none. But in that 
spring of 1883 we one day found ourselves face to face with two 
unmistakable camels. They stood gazing intently about half a 
mile away—a huge, shaggy, hump-backed beast, accompanied by 
a second not half its size. The pair wheeled and made off ere we 
had approached within 400 yards, and something “ game-like” in 
their style prompted our first and last attempt at pursuit. The 
camels simply ran away from us, splashing through slippery mud 
and water, two feet deep, at double our horses’ speed, and raising 
in their flight a tearing trail of foam as of twin torpedo-boats. 
Since then we have fallen in with camels on very many 
occasions, singly, in twos and threes, or in herds of a dozen to 
twenty and upwards, old and young together. It is, in fact, only 
necessary to ride far enough into the marisma to make sure of 
seeing some of these extraordinary monsters startling the desolate 
horizon, and silhouetted in incongruous juxtaposition with ranks 
of rosy flamingoes and flotillas of swimming waterfowl. 
The whole story of these wild camels and their origin has been 
narrated in Wild Spain. Briefly summarised, the animals were 
introduced to Spain in 1829 by the Marquis de Villafranca 
(House of Medina-Sidonia) with the object of employing them in 
transport and agriculture, as they are so commonly used on the 
opposite shores of Africa. But local difficulties ensued—chiefly 
arising from the intense fear and repugnance of horses towards 
camels, which resulted in numerous accidents—and eventually 
275 
