Wild Camels 279 
detection by Civil Guards and douaniers. The men then sail down the 
river and sell the meat at San Lucar as venison. 
When in the marisma in 1892 I met one day a troop of forty 
animals—some old males, their huge bodies covered with thick hair like 
blankets; there were also females followed by their young—fantastic of 
appearance, owing to the disproportionate length of their legs, but 
galloping and frisking around their mothers as they had done since birth. 
Next day my companion and I took lassoes; we encountered a huge 
old male, singly, which trotted and galloped round our horses, terrifying 
the poor beasts to such an extent that we could not come near the camel. 
At length after a fifty-minutes’ chase, in crossing a part where the mud 
was soft and the surface much broken up by cattle coming to drink, we 
overtook him. Thanks to my horse having less fear than the other, I 
was presently able to throw a Jasso around the camel, my companion 
hauling taut the rope to hold the prisoner fast. The great brute proved 
very active, defending himself with his immense flat feet, which he used 
as clubs, and, moreover, he bit, and the bite of a camel is venomous. 
Ultimately I succeeded in getting a second rope around him and 
dragging him to the ground, where he lay like the domestic camel. The 
photographs illustrate this episode. 
Old males frequently have the hair very ragged and scant, especially 
on hind-quarters, and on their knees are great callosities. The truly wild 
camels of the marisma are fast disappearing. A friend has furnished 
me with the approximate number now remaining absolutely wild, viz. 
fifteen or sixteen near La Macha fronting the Palace of Tisana, besides 
five enclosed in the Cerrado de Matas Gordas, near the Palacio del Rey, 
and belonging to Madame La Condesa de Paris. 
It was owing to the rapid decrease in their numbers, and in order to 
save them from extinction, that the Condesa had these enclosures, known 
as Matas Gordas, prepared. They contain excellent pasturage, besides some 
extent of brushwood ; yet the enclosed camels do not flourish, nor have 
they ever bred. Big as the enclosures are, yet the area may be too 
restricted for them; or it may be the disturbance due to the presence of 
cattle and herdsmen (since the cerrados are let for grazing) that explains 
this failure; or possibly the camels resent being enclosed at all. At any 
rate the spectacle of troops of camels rushing wildly forward in all direc- 
tions is passing away all too quickly, and soon nothing but the legend 
will remain. 
Truly it is melancholy that the wild camels should be allowed utterly 
to disappear, representing, as they do, so extraordinary a fact in zoological 
science. 
Our friend Mr. William Garvey tells us that in the summer 
of 1907. while returning from Villamanrique, crossing the dry 
marisma in his automobile, he saw three camels. He drove 
