V. The Ship of the Desert
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There is one baby animal that rides when he goes bye-bye. He isn't carried on his mother's back, or in her breast pocket. He rides in a hammock on the back of a trained nurse. Something dreadful would happen to that nurse if he should stumble and drop the baby. Its mother follows close behind them all day, watching with her big brown eyes. The owner of the animals watches, too. That is a precious baby. If he lives to grow up he will be worth as much as a fine horse.
It is the baby camel that rides in this way. Although he is three feet high, and heavier than a bossy calf when he is born, he is so weak and wobbly on his legs that he can scarcely walk. Without his mother's milk he would die. The mother has to go with the caravan of hundreds of other camels. A caravan, or passenger and freight train of camels, travels fifty or more miles a day across the burning sand and rocky hills of the deserts of Sahara and Arabia. So the helpless baby camel is put into a hammock, and swung from one side of a big, two-humped freight camel. The nurse may carry half a ton of other things beside,—leather bags of water, bales of cloth and dates, jugs of oil and blocks of rock salt. All day long the nurse swings along at a rocking gait. The baby must feel much as a human baby feels when rocked in a cradle.
There is a curious reason why the baby isn't put on his mother's back. Camels are very stupid animals. If the mother could not see her baby, even if it was on her own back, she would be apt to think he had been left behind. Then she might turn and bolt for the last camping place. On the nurse-camel she can see him, and she follows contentedly.
A camel isn't really a wild animal, and he isn't really tame. He is too stupid to be either one or the other. For many hundreds of years the camel has been one of the most useful animals to men, because of his great strength, and his endurance of heat, thirst and hunger. But he has never learned to do more than a few simple things. He never seems to know or to care for his driver, or for a master who may have brought him up from a baby. He looks very wise and meek and good-tempered. But really, he has as little sense as a sheep, is as ill-tempered as a cross bull, and as stubborn as amule. He works, but not willingly, as a horse does. If he had as good a mind as the elephant, no man could make him work at all.
In the hot, dry desert regions the camel is the horse, the cow and the sheep of the Arabian herders and traders. He carries all the burdens, he furnishes flesh and milk for food, and hair for weaving cloth. To the children of America the camel is as strange and interesting as many of the fiercest wild animals. We know less about him than we do about bears. He tells you very little about himself, and he shows no curiosity about the crowds that visit his pen at the zoo. He gazes over people's heads in a dreamy way, just like that old stone sphynx head that stares across the desert in Egypt. One bright little boy once said: "A camel is a great, big, ugly puzzle." Let us see if we can work out a little of this living puzzle.
Don't go too near a camel's head. Sometimes, for no cause at all, he has a terrible fit of rage. Then he tries to bite and to k;ck the person nearest. The first thing you are sure to notice, and to laugh at, is the queer way in which he chews his food. His lower jaw swings from side to side like a hammock. His upper lip is cleft up the middle. It is what is called a hare-lip. The camel stretches and twists and feels its food with this thick, split lip as if it were two fingers. He doesn't seem to look at his food at all. So you are quite ready to believe he has never learned not to eat poisonous plants that grow on the desert. A herd of browsing camels has to be watched as close as a flock of silly sheep.
Everything about a camel is as queer as if you had dreamed him in a nightmare. His neck and legs look too long and sprawling for his body. His feet are split into two hoofed toes almost up to the ankle. His head is too small, and is tipped up and poked out in a foolish sort of way. His long brown eyes fairly pop out of his head like agate marbles, from sockets too small for them. His nostrils are bias slits. He can open them wide or close them almost shut. His rough, red-brown hair looks as if it never had been combed. On his knobby knees and elbows and arched breast-bone he wears bare, leathery pads like a football player. Finally, his hump makes him look as if he had his back up against an unfriendly world.
One of the few things the camel has learned to do is to kneel when he is ordered to do so. At a word he drops. The pads protect his joints from the hard ground. He moans and groans as if in terrible pain. He knows some kind of a load- is to be put on, and complains aloud. He doesn't wait to find out if the load is to beheavy or light. He carries half a ton of goods for hundreds of miles across wide deserts, with ease. But he groans just as loud when he is asked to carry two little children about his track in the zoo. With more groans he heaves his big body up and starts to run, or rather to rock.
If you get sea-sick on a boat you would better not try to ride a camel. He lifts both feet on one side at the same time, tilting his body sideways. Then he lifts the two feet on the other side. So you roll over and back. Tossing and pitching, heaving and rolling you go, as if you were in a sail-boat on rough water. In a minute you are sick at the stomach. Very soon your back aches from the jolting, and you get a sharp pain at the waist line. Maybe you think this is why the camel is called "the ship of the desert." It isn't. It is because he carries people and goods across wide seas of sand.
Haven't you heard people say: "Handsome is as handsome does?" If you could see the camel at home where he "does handsome," you would forget what an ugly, ungainly beast he is. You would think how wonderfully he is made for the work he has to do. No other animal can live and carry great burdens in such a climate, on such scant supplies of food and water.
It is a wonderful thing to see a camel caravan start from a town on the edge of the desert. There are hundreds of animals in a great yard, tons of goods in bales, dozens of drivers and passengers, and a swarm of dogs. The owner of the caravan is a white-robed and turbaned Arab chief. He looks over every animal carefully. There are slenderly built racing dromedaries, or one-humped camels, with hair so fine that it is used for making artist's paint brushes and dress goods. And there are stout, short-legged, two-humped freight camels as shaggy as bears. Indeed, there are as many breeds of camels as there are of horses. The fleetest of foot can travel a hundred miles a day, the slowest only twenty-five.
The first thing the owner looks at is the hump. No camel is taken with the caravan unless its hump is big and solid. The hump is the camel's pantry shelf full of fat, to be drawn upon when food is scarce. Next, the feet are looked over to see that there are no stones between the toes, and no thorns or bruises in the soft footpads. Just before starting the animals are given all the water they can drink. A camel can drink enough water to last him three days. His second stomach is a honey-comb of little tanks for storing water.The passengers, the chief, and the women and children of his family mount the dromedaries. Half a ton or more of goods, the leather water bottles, oil jugs, tents, sleeping rugs, bags of dates and beans to feed the animals, and the baby camels in their hammocks, are loaded on the stout, two-humped camels. The drivers and herders walk, and the dogs tail in at the end of a mile-long procession. At the front rides the chief and his sons, or helpers. They carry guns, for there are robber bands on the desert—regular train-robbers who "hold up" rich caravans, and steal goods and train also.
The start is made very early in the cool of the morning, while the stars are still shining. There is no roadway or trail. The sand shifts and drifts like loose snow before every wind, filling up tracks as fast as they are made. A camel caravan travels as does a ship at sea. It is guided by the sun and the stars, and by certain hills, rocky gullies and dreadful heaps of bleached bones.
In the hottest hours of the day there is a rest for men and animals; at night a long rest. Tents are put up and the animals are unloaded. A camp is set up under date palms beside a well. Every foot of hundreds of camels is examined. A torn or bruised pad is cleaned, dressed with healing salve and tied up in rags. The animals are hobbled by strapping one hind foot up to the knee, so they cannot stray.
For food, after a day's travel, a camel is given a small measure of hard, sugarless dates or dry beans. Besides, he crops leafless twigs, thistles and thorny shrubs. Camels will eat anything. They will chew their own leather bridles, or tent cloth. One witty writer has said that a camel can make a breakfast from a Sunday newspaper and an old umbrella. He can go without water for three days.
Day after day a camel caravan travels in this way, covering hundreds of miles, and touching at lonely green islands of oases. Sometimes a great wind storm sweeps over the desert, hiding the sun and filling the air with a blinding, stinging rain of sand. Down the animals drop, under their loads. They stretch their necks out straight, shut their eyes, close their nostrils to the narrowest slits, and lie still. The people turn their robes over their heads and huddle in the shelter of the loaded humps. Above the roar of the wind and the hissing and pelting of sand and pebbles, can be heard the low moaning and hard breathing of the camels. They seem to suffer. Yet, when the storm is over, they rise and rock on as before, across the burning waste.Although the Bactrian or two-humped freight camel is a native of the high, cold plains of Central Asia and North China, he thrives and works just as well in the heat and drought of the desert. In his old home he is a draft animal, too. He carries burdens over snow-covered plains and even mountains. He sleeps out of doors on the snow in gales of icy wind. He eats, not only hard, bitter plants, but fish, bones and tough skins. He can go for a week without water, and when no other is to be found, can drink the salt, bitter waters of dead seas. On the desert he can carry heavier burdens and endure greater hardships than the one-humped dromedary, although he is burdened with an arctic coat of wool and hair. He is the ox of the earth's waste places, as the dromedary is the riding horse.
At night, when a caravan is in camp, the little children of the chief drink cups of the camel's thick, cheesy milk mixed with water. On the chief's table is camel flesh, as juicy and tender as beef. The herders wear robes and turbans of brown, camel's hair cloth. The master sleeps under a camel's hair tent. Without this ugly, stupid, useful beast, the hot deserts of the Old World would lie unpeopled and unknown. The camel knows nothing of his value and cares less. Like the desert itself, he submits to be used, but remains wild. Sullen and forbidding, he holds his master a stranger.
There is just one thing for which the camel has a softer feeling. The mother camel shows affection for her baby. After the day's march she has him all to herself. She nurses him, she nuzzles him with her sensitive hare-lip. He cuddles up to her for warmth. After the terrible heat of the day the night on the desert is often cold. But it is very still and clear. She can feast her eyes on her baby, for the dark, blue-velvet dome of the sky is hung all over with little golden lamps of stars.