THE CAMEL AND ITS WAYS

Evening Star, Issue 19327, 13 August 1926, Page 9

THE CAMEL AND ITS WAYS

A STUDY IH DIGNITY Speaking with some experience, i will confess to a great regal'd for the camel, all of whoso moods —well almost all—command admiration and respect (writes Mr Frank Scudamore, the wellknown war correspondent, in the ‘ Daily Nows ’). Watch him gracefully picking a light lunch of two-inch-long thorns, nibbling delicately at each spike with discriminating lips, and you have a lesson in table manners; observe him when, with, upstretchcd neck and wide nostrils, he absorbs the tobacco smoke puffed to him by the master squatted between his knees. Ho is a picture of dignity in repose. Note the whole-bcartcdness with which lie prepared for a long journey in waterless wastes. With bis head sunk to the cars in the stream he swills and swills and swills until his great barrel becomes distended like a giant goatskin. Ho seems to know —who shall say how ?■—whether it is to be six days or ten bolore he will get another drink.

And at loading-up time, see his shrewdly calculating overlook of, the* goods scattered around. His liie companions, tho camel-men, know that he will boar his just burden without protest, and size up each bale and bundle accordingly. But if they exceed the proper load by as much as a bundle ol polo sticks, his protest is ready in an agony of raucous lamentation. Even at the supremo moment that comes to all created beings, the earned insists on a certain procedure, and refuses to die unless his long neck be twisted round towards bis left buttock. I have known his native masters to play on this trait of obstinacy by staking a sick beast down with his head stretched well out before him, iand then, by food and coaxing, persuade the poor creature to change his mind and take up life’s burdens again. To bis masters —and camel-men, wherever found, arc a type apart—the animal represents everything requisite for existence; clothing, housing, transport, drink, and food. I have drunk camel’s milk. It is satisfying. I have also eaten camel moat. If I had tasted bicycle tyro I would be the bettor able to compare the two. I am sure they have much in common. But the Arabs and the Bedouin like it, and if it be an oxotic taste that is their affair.

Yes, the camel is an absorbing study, whether it be the big double-humped Baetrian beast of Asia who, savage ami stately, tramps tho mountain roads the winter through in gangs a thousand strong—journeying always at night with his thousand-pound load, and glaring with baleful eyes above an iron ! muzzle at all humanity—or whether it . be the tiny, lithe, slim-limbcd racer oi I tho Red Sea, Sudan coast, or the heavy, stolid baggage-beast of Egypt, , stupid and placid as his friends the j fellaheen. I And note that not all tho camel’s 1 days are passed in a mood of sullen 1 dignity. The creature has, I am sure, ideals and aspirations. On a bright spring day, indeed, in a big Persian f ion tier town, I have remarked a huge Baetrian weight-carrier imbued sud(denly and without warning with the | frolicsomcness and general joie do vivre that_ the close of winter had awakened in all animated nature. The camel caravan, bedecked with carpets and red, bracelets and cowrieshell ornaments, was marching into town—the last trip of the season. The great beasts, in their gaudy trappings, were in high good humor. They tripped mincingly down the rugged street, and of a sudden the spring feeling seized on one member of the procession. | She—it was a lady—gave voice to a j loud squeak of exultation, cast off her j load or bales with a jerk and a twist j and galumphed—literally galumphed—i down the centre of the road in an ecstasy of grotesque contortions. There was no room for doubt as to the meaning of the gesture. That shecamel was picturing herself as a hum--1 miiig bird, and striving to live up to the conception.