BURDEN CAPACITY. 



19 



late camel,, means literally hearer. He is sometimes used for 

 draught, as in Egypt for ploughing, and British India for drawing 

 heavy ordnance, and some have conjectured that, with a suita- 

 ble harness, he w^ould make a very serviceable draught animal. 

 But nature seems to have designed him especially for the pack 

 or saddle. The Arabs say that he is born ready harnessed for 

 his work, with his pack-saddle on, in the shape of his hump of 

 fat, gristle, leather, and thick, soft hair. They certainly have 

 added but little to the natural arrangement. The artificial 

 pack-saddle is made by stuffing a bag eight or nine feet in 

 length with straw or hay, sewing the ends together, and fitting 

 it round the hump. Over this is placed a primitive frame-work 

 of some kind of hard wood, composed of tw^o pieces about 

 eighteen inches each in length, disposed in the shape of an 

 inverted Y in front, and two other similar pieces behind the 

 hump ; these are connected and kept in place by two cross 

 pieces at the bottom, of some three or four feet in length. The 

 whole is dovetailed together and tied with strips of leather, A 

 sailor, with his palm and needle, and skill in splicing, would 

 turn out the whole aflfair complete at an hour's notice. The 

 frame nestles into the pad, which finds a secure footing in the 

 soft hair round the hump, and only a loose rope, by way of 

 girth, is required to keep the whole in its place. 



The camel begins to carry burdens at four years of age, and, 

 if properly treated, will maintain his usefulness to forty. The 

 weight which they can carry varies somewhat, according to the 

 species and condition of the animal. The ordinary pack for a 

 full-grown camel in Algeria is from three hundred to four hun- 

 dred kilogrammes, w^hich, with the weight of the pack-saddle and 

 driver's luggage, is equivalent to from seven hundred to nine 

 hundred pounds. I have often seen camels walking under 

 much heavier loads, and to this is to be added the weight of 

 the driver, who walks and rides by turns, as the fit is on him. 

 Among some camels imported into Texas, a few years ago, was 

 one that would rise and walk under a burden of nineteen hun- 

 dred pounds. Even this extraordinary feat has been beaten, 

 as I understand, by one of the Government carnels, now in Cali- 

 fornia, which has carried a pack of two thousand pounds for 

 fifty miles in a single day. The camels in the Canary Islands 

 carry an average pack of one thousand pounds, but their journeys 



