DESERT “SHIPS”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1938, Page 7

DESERT “SHIPS”

CAMEL HAS FEW FRIENDS A VICIOUS ANIMAL. BIG ROLE IN TRANSPORT. When the prophet Mahomet was composing the Koran he solemnly described the camel as an instance of the wisdom of God; but the average individual who has had anything to do with these animals in their native environment is inclined to think there is a good spice-of the Evil One in their composition (writes T. Kerr Ritchie in "Men Only,” London). Camels are always grumbling and biting beneath their burdens. Some are more morose and wicked than, others, but I’ve- never met an amiable, gentle camel. The Arabs love their horses as they love their children, but they treat the all-necessary ship of the desert as they treat their mother-in-law. Naturally the camel becomes vicious and vindictive. The dogs bark, but -the camel marches on; he cares for nobody, as nobody cares for him. Orientals generally overload and overwork the camel, and that does not improve his disposition. For instance, we allot 364 pounds each to camels doing the Khyber Pass journey and drive them moderate distances each day; the native owners load them up with nearly three-quarters of a ton and drive them 80 miles in three or four days. If the animals die, it is Kismet; if they survive, they are turned out to pasture for a week and recover.

There is never a moment of the day when a camel will not snap its master’s arm oft if it has the chance. It can inflict one of the worst crunching rips possible by any pair of jaws. It will seize the hand that feeds it; it will take a piece out of a man’s back or leg; it will fasten upon a man who rides past it in a narrow defile and dash him to death.

Even among themselves- they fight dreadfully. Lacking horns, they use their teeth, and with them they seize a leg and wrench and tug until they have downed their rival; then they drop upon him with their knees and pound him to death. A contest between two bull camels is a grim spectacle; and it is a dangerous one, for the example of the first two is infectious, and will set all the other males roaring and battling among themselves with a frenzy not to be described, and a damage to merchandise not to be mentioned in the hearing of the native owner. The camel driver has got to have nerves of steel; and nothing is more just than the Oriental proverb, “When slaves hold the whip, let the camel driver quake." Not long ago there was a famous, or infamous, beast in Government service in India. His temper was a cyclone in camel skin. He was hated, yet much admired, for he had killed two men. So his driver put a cluster of ostrich feathers on his head, marched him invariably at the head of the caravan, and told of his deeds with exultation.

A distinguished English official approached the man one day, and in course of volubly relating all about his beast’s wonderful record and exploits the driver momentarily forgot his charge. The camel lunged at him openmouthed, but the driver was quicker. He jumped aside, then literally flew at the camel’s head, seizing its pendulous upper lip with one bare hand, placing it between his teeth and shaking it violently. At this indignity the camel, killer of two, knew its master, became quiet as a lamb, and was docility itself. Milk and butter from the females, flesh from the young and the males, speed and strength from all, ropes, tents, and clothes from the hair. John the Baptist conformed to desert convention when he arrayed himself in garments made of camel hair, and Sir Titus Salt conferred a benefit on Yorkshire at the beginning of the nineteenth century when he created a vast industry at Saltire and Bradford by working up the wool of the alpaca, South American first cousin of the Arabian dromedary. Aside from material benefits, the first fruits of Arab genius were camel songs. As they made their long, monotonous courses across deserts, they composed verselets, keeping time with the footfalls of the beasts they rode, singing songs of dark-eyed maidens and streams twinkling clear in dreamland oases, fierce hymns of battle and of contest'for wells.

The metre was fixed by the tread of the camel, and it came about that the beasts marched better in time to their master’s voices than in silence. With a quickening of the music they raised (heir heads, lengthened their paces, and hastened their speed; and new rhythms more complex lines, and couplets grew to match the hurry of gladdened feet. So Arabic literature grew in the desert, beaten out beneath the burning sky by men swaying and swinging to the lurching gait of the marching camel.

There is something of the serpent in the whole appearance of the camel, in its love of music as in its general temper; and scientists tell us that in the camel family the corpuscles of the blood are not circular as in other mammals, but oval as in birds or reptiles. An odd thing about camels is that their bodily temperature is not constant like that of man and other mammals. It rises with the surrounding heat and falls with the cold desert winds at night. We vary little more than a degree whether we are at the North Pole or in the tropics;- the camel’s temperature rises and falls eight or nine degrees in the course of 24 hours in the Sahara Desert.

What would be a rich abundance for a horse or a cow would not be acceptable to a camel. For him the lush grass of-the meadow is not food; give him the prickliest thorn, the scrubbiest thistlelike growth, and camel paradise is there. The Arabian camel will stride across a field ready for haymaking, paddle through a running brook (which camels abominate), to reach a hedge composed of forbidding briar and bramble, and feast with rapture. They luxuriate on bitter weeds and horrid, filthy, mineralised water, salt to the taste as Sodom and Gomorrah. Nowadays you will find Arabian camels in Arizona and New Mexico: they toil in Zanzibar and sweat in southern Italy. They are valued servants in the Canary Islands, and esteemed friends of carrier and cultivator in Spain. They help to carry the wire which fences Australian farms from devouring rabbits, and on return journeys bring down wool to the ports. In concise Arab phrase, "One decrepit camel still bears the burdens of many asses."