PECULIAR QUALITIES OF THE CAMEL. 
209 
quality it is., as I have already stated,, altogether 
deficient, but from the stamina which it possesses 
enabling it to proceed day after day, from morning 
until night, without failing in its strength. 
This animal, though generally docile, is sometimes 
very irritable, and when once roused to fury is 
with difficulty appeased until it has had its revenge, 
which is occasionally fatal to the aggressor. I once 
witnessed an enraged camel seize with its teeth the 
arm of its driver, which it snapped in an instant, and 
it would have trodden the man to death had he not 
been rescued by some of his companions who hap- 
pened to be upon the spot, and diverted the beast’s 
attention from its victim. When, however, these 
creatures have once inflicted retribution, they are 
readily pacified, but not till then; so that when a 
camel has been enraged by its driver, the latter usually 
throws his turban and tunic upon the ground before it, 
when the angry beast tramples upon them, screaming 
and snorting with every demonstration of the most 
terrific rage, which however soon subsides, and the 
offender may again approach it with impunity. 
The camel is endowed by nature in such a manner 
as strikingly to exhibit the providential mercy of the 
Creator. It is a native of those desert tracts where 
both water and pasture are precarious, and where 
neither is ever found in abundance, principally in- 
habiting Arabia Deserta and the central portions of 
Africa, where vast and trackless deserts stretch their 
inhospitable solitudes, — where neither dews fall nor 
rains freshen ; and it is singularly provided against the 
austerities of the region in which it dwells. Its foot 
