304 
THE SOLD IE HS CAMEL 
to water every second or third day. They were on 
one-third rations, which they did not always get. Foi 
thirty-seven hours they were tied down so tightly in 
the zeribah before Abu Klea, that they could not 
move a limb, and I doubt if they were fed at all during 
that time. Then for sixteen hours they were on the 
march, and tied down for another twenty-four hours 
without any food. The result almost justified the 
saying, that we thought we had found in the camel an 
animal which required neither food, drink, nor rest ; 
we certainly acted as if the camel were a piece of 
machinery.” Except during the time of battle, all 
this cruelty to the animals and waste of mobility in 
the force was unnecessary. The so-called “ desert ” 
was full of food and well supplied with water. On the 
day before the retreat from Metemmeh, a camel convoy 
of the friendly Kababish came in across the desert in 
perfect condition. u It made my mouth water,” writes 
an officer, “ to see these magnificent, well-fed brutes 
swinging along, each with its load balanced on its 
hump.” His own beast had holes in its skin into 
which you could have put a cocoa-nut. Read in the 
light of these facts, the inimitable ballad in which Mr. 
Rudyard Kipling sums up the miseries of the com- 
missariat*camel, and the incompetence of the unin- 
structed British private to manage it, is an invitation 
to substitute common-sense and kindness for ignorance 
and cruelty in the treatment of the four-footed army 
which helps to fight our battles. 
Major Leonard has been engaged in this service in 
