DOMESTICITY AND DOCILITY. 



7 



Domesticity and Docility. 

 The camel is presented to us from tlie be(i;inning as the 

 friend and servant of man. He figures in the first catalogue of 

 domestic animals of which we have any record, and appears in 

 this domestic state to have been a birthday gift to man from 

 his Creator. In those primitive days, wdien the earth was fresh 

 from the hands of its Maker, and the uses of the several king- 

 doms, which God gave man for his inheritance, were best 

 understood, we find the camel to have been the most regarded 

 of all the animal creation ; the companion of his master in his 

 farthest wanderings, as well as the denizen of his household and 

 the playmate of his children. When a wife was sought for Isaac, 

 the old servant of Abraham fixed upon a regard for camels as 

 an appropriate mark by which he would not fail to recognize 

 the maiden whom the Lord had destined for the favorite child 

 of his master. And how beautifullv did the s^entle Eebecca 

 answer to the test : " And when she had done giving him drink, 

 she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have 

 done drinking. 



" And she hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough, 

 and ran again unto the well to draw^ w^ater, and drew for all 

 his camels." 



When Jacob was returning home, and wished to meet his 

 brother Esau upon friendly terms, he sent him, among other 

 presents, thirty milch camels w^ith their colts. Then, as now, 

 on the long inland eastern routes the camel was the family con- 

 veyance ; Jacob in his travels, we are told, set his sons and 

 waives upon camels, probably several upon the same animal. 

 It is certainly no uncommon sight, at the present day, to see 

 half a dozen women and children huddled cozily a camel-back, 

 going to make a neighborly call on some cousins, perchance two 

 or three hundred miles distant. The appreciation of the camel 

 to kindness, in word or tone or touch, has, doubtless, much to 

 do in rendering him the favorite animal of the household, and, 

 indeed, causing him to be looked upon as an inseparable por- 

 tion thereof. The marabouts in Africa, when they enter a 

 house, invoke a blessing on the chief and on his wives, his chil- 

 dren and his camels ; and when they are sent to negotiate a 

 peace with a belligerent tribe, they preface their diplomatic 



