308 THE SOLDIER'S CAMEL 
envy, were worthy of a camp-ballad by Rudyard 
Kipling.” Yet this is, we submit, an error on the 
right side, both in economy and efficiency. Which 
cost most, the elephants’ comforts on the road to Can- 
dahar, or the ninety-two camels which dropped from 
exhaustion and hunger on the first day’s march back 
from Metemmeh, where the day before 50,000 lbs. 
weight of stores had been flung into the Nile ? The 
64 patient ox” combines the cunning of the mule 
with a spirit of revenge which is generally attributed 
to the camel, though Count Gleichen states, that only 
one case of camel-bite was reported to him during the 
Nile expedition. A leading bullock on the Candahar 
march lay down six times, and when it was at last 
reluctantly agreed that the creature must be dying 
from exhaustion, it “ rushed at a private and tossed 
him ten feet in the air, then on to the next man and 
sent him flying, and lastly at its own driver, whom it 
tumbled over like a ninepin, while the rest took refuge 
behind the wagons.” The creature would not move in 
harness, and finally had to be unyoked and driven into 
camp. The mule is the handiest and hardiest, the 
donkey the least trouble, and the pony the pleasantest 
. of all pack animals, according to Major Leonard’s ex- 
perience, the Spanish donkeys and Sicilian mules being 
perhaps the finest and most useful of their respective 
kinds. But though military opinion is, on the whole, in 
favour of the mule, he gives facts and figures to show 
that the camel, unmanaged as it is, is a still more econo- 
mical and effective beast for military service. Its power 
