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XXVIII

ALL that day there were no tourists for the great white camel to carry, nor any for the two tall brown camels, also of superior breed, his companions in waiting. The white camel was not actually white, the colour of his fine long hair being old ivory deepening to creamed coffee; but he was famed as "the white camel" and so called by the Arabs and by the travellers who came to this oasis. Moreover, the white camel was distinguished among his kind not only for his colour, but for his voice. The voice of any camel has a wide range in pessimistic eloquence; beyond question a camel has a vocabulary and can say many things, all of them discontented. Without flattery it can be said that this master of patience is at the same time the world's supreme artist in the expression of discontent—a seeming paradox hinting that at least the one virtue is not its own reward—and discontent is always inharmonious. No one has ever thought the camel's utterance musical; in it there is too much that is pre-