CHAP. VI.] 
HABITS OF THE CAMEL 
253 
desert marching, arrive in good pasture, and die, within 
a few hours, of inflammation caused by repletion. It 
is extraordinary how they can exist upon the driest 
and apparently most un-nutritious food. When other 
animals are starving, the camel manages to pick up 
a subsistence, eating the ends of barren, leafless twigs, 
the dried sticks of certain shrubs, and the tough dry 
paper-like substance of the dome palm, about as 
succulent a breakfast as would be a green umbrella 
and a Times newspaper. With intense greediness the 
camel, although a hermit in simplicity of fare in hard 
times, feeds voraciously when in abundant pasture, 
always seeking the greenest shrubs. The poison-bush 
becomes a fatal bait. 
The camel is by no means well understood in 
Europe. Far from being the docile and patient animal 
generally described, it is quite the reverse, and the 
males are frequently dangerous. They are exceedingly 
perverse; and are, as before described, excessively 
stupid. For the great deserts they are wonderfully 
adapted, and without them it would be impossible 
to cross certain tracts of country for want of water. 
Exaggerated accounts have been written respecting 
the length of time that a camel can travel without 
drinking. The period that the animal can subsist 
without suffering from thirst depends entirely upcn 
