The Camel.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5080, 16 September 1891, Page 4

The Camel.

A writer who is giving a very interesting aeries of letters from Africa has tin's to say of the disagreeable traits of tlie indispensable camel. They had arrived at the banks of a river near Alcazar, and he had a chance to see how they engineered a «amel down a steep bank and forced him to cross the stream. He says : The victim was brought to the bank and steered round nntil he pointed in the right direction, after which as many stout fellows as could find room caught him by the tail, while everyone else picked up whatever was nearest and pounded the beast for all they were worth. If the camel felt like it, he braced his feet and slid down the bank like a woman when aha tries to play man and slides on the ice, while the men hanging on to the camel's tail puton the brakes and held back until he was safely landed in the water, after which he was driven across, growling

and grumbling all the waj*, as if some insult liad been offered, instead of his being helped to make up liis stupid mind, as well as being held back from falling on his slender neck. If the camel did not feel like it, he simply spread his legs like a wrecked umbrella, and lay down and bubbled, and then woe to the man who came near him until he had his bubble out : after which he would likely get up and condescend to slide down, though sometimes when a camel lies down he consults his own sweet will about getting up a train, and so much time is lost in the consultation that the caravan is obliged to go on without him, leaving a man or two behind to call on Mooley Indrecs and Allah for assistance until it pleases his highness to get up, after which he goes on again in the same stupid style until he takes it into his ugly, wicked head to do some other vicious or mulish thing.

Talk about the obstinacy of the mule. The camei who could not give points to a 300-year-old mule on obstinacy would be a tender little lamb compared with his kind ; and for ugliness, I'd rather carve my way 011 a mule's flank in English with a dull knife, than to get within five feet of an ordinary every-day camel. Just what this bubbling is I do not understand, any more than when a camel gets ugly, which is pretty nearly all the time he is awake, lie throws one of his stomachs up into liis mouth, so it hangs out like a great .sack, a foot or more long, and at the same time slobbers or bellows with a noise very much like the exhaust of a heavy engine, and at such times even his keepers steer clear of him ; for. as soon as his eyes are turned, quick as a flash, your clothes are in liis mouth, and a second later you are simply a bag of jelly, which, if let alone, he will turn and knead beneath his knees for hours, bellowing with mingled rage and satisfaction.