Food For Gossip

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3483, 23 August 1937, Page 7

Food For Gossip

When we were talking the other day of the interest to be found in examining the footprints of animals (writes a journalist) I confess I never thought of them as food for gossip, but so Zwemer describes them. “Camel tracks are gossip and science, history and philosophy to the Arab caravan.” Living in a sparsely peopled land, the sight of those footprints may well cause a thrill of interest and serve as food for conjecture. Whose trail? Whither bound? Travelling heavy or travelling lig:ht? Fast or slow? And so on. But then the camel serves so many purposes. It is, according to the Arabs, the best of all Allah’s gifts, and when you come to consider the matter the statements seems scarcely an exaggeration. Food, milk, hair for tents, ropes, shawls and coarser fabrics, flesh food, leather, bones, and other useful substances. There's a glowing testimonial for Kipling's much-abused “oonts.” But there is another side to the picture. .The camel has been of service to man for untold ages, yet not really domesticated, but only subjugated. It has its uses, but “the want of bodily beauty is accompanied by a viciousness of temper and general stupidity of disposition which can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere.” Seems ungracious to say so, all the same, but then we heap contempt on the “mulish mule,” yet find it upon occasion extremely useful.