MY LORD THE CAMEL
No knowledge that could increase his influence over the peoples of
Arabia was neglected by Lawrence. He even made a minute study of
that beast of mystery, the camel, the character and quality of
which few Arabs are altogether familiar with, although it plays
such an all-important part in their lives. Lawrence is the only
European I have ever met who possesses “camel instinct”—a quality
that implies intimate acquaintance with the beast’s habits, powers,
and innumerable idiosyncrasies. Auda Abu Tayi, the Bedouin Robin
Hood, had this instinct developed to an unusually high degree.
There are six different species of camels found in Central Arabia,
from whence come the finest breeds. The Bedouin call their country
“the Mother of the Camel.” Arabian camels have but one hump; in
fact, most of the Arabs have never even heard of the two-humped
variety, which is found only in Central Asia, to the northwest of
Persia, chiefly in the Gobi Desert. The two-humped breed is slow
and of little use except as a beast of burden. The one-humped camel
is the dromedary, which is the Greek word for a camel that runs.
The chief unit of wealth in Arabia is the camel. A man is not
spoken of as owning so many apartment-houses or country estates,
but as owning so many camels. From biblical down to modern times,
wars have been waged in the desert for the possession of camels.
One tribe will swoop down upon another and steal all its camels;
then that tribe will mount its horses, dash across the desert, and
drive off all the camels of another tribe. So, in the course of
twelve months, one camel may become the stolen property of half a
dozen different tribes. The very existence of human life in the
desert depends upon the camel. The Arabs use it not only as a beast
of burden; they drink its milk and use its hair for making cloth,
and when it becomes old they kill it and use its flesh for food.
Camel steak in Arabia is regarded much as blubber is among the
Eskimos, but the average European would prefer to worry along on
caviar and pâté de foie gras.
The camel is practically the only animal that can exist on the
scant vegetation of the desert. Its teeth are so long that it can
chew cactus without the thorns pricking either its lips or the roof
of its mouth. Although camels can go for long periods without
water, when they _do_ drink they more than make up for lost time.
It takes a half-hour to water them, but each camel can accommodate
a nice little swallow of twenty gallons. It is very irritating when
suffering from thirst in the desert to hear your camel drawing on
the copious reserve of water inside its body. At such times the
Arabs, when in dire straits, will kill a camel and drink the water
in its stomach. The water is of a greenish color and has a greenish
taste, but one can’t be too fastidious when perishing from thirst.
In judging a camel, some of the many things to be considered are
the length of the inside of the belly, the way the beast lifts its
feet, the way it carries its head, the depth of the neck, the
length of the front leg, the length of the front and back shoulders,
and the girth and shape of the hump. A very long leg is particularly
desirable, as is a small circumference around the waist. A camel
should be neither too fat nor too thin. The hump, which should be
of hard, fatless muscle, is of paramount importance. The dromedary
actually seems to live on its hump, and if it be worked too hard
the hump gradually disappears. If it has no hump, or a low one or
a thin one or a fat one, the animal is of little value and will
break down in a short time. Age is judged by the teeth, as with
the horse. Camels usually live for about twenty-five years, being
in their prime between the ages of four and fourteen. Over good
ground first-class Arabian dromedaries can trot up to twenty-one
miles an hour, canter up to twenty-eight miles an hour, and gallop
up to thirty-two with their legs going like huge pistons. For a
whole day’s travel, however, the most desirable pace is a jog-trot
of seven miles an hour. The ordinary speed for a long journey of
many days across the desert is only about four and a half miles an
hour; and if the journey extends over hundreds of miles, it is
advisable always to keep the camel at a walk. Lawrence’s feat in
making a forced trek of three hundred miles in three days was
therefore looked upon by his followers as almost a miracle. A good
camel makes absolutely no sound when it walks; a trait which is of
great assistance both to the Bedouins during their night raids and
to desert traders who fear assault. The Arab teaches his mount not
to whine, and a whole caravan may pass within twenty yards of a
tent without being heard by the occupants.
Photograph: THE MOSQUE OF THE HOLY KAABA
Photograph: COLONEL LAWRENCE AND THE AUTHOR
The winter of 1917-18 was a severe one for the camels. Lawrence’s
army was at Tafileh in January, at an altitude of five thousand
feet. The snow drifted to a depth of four feet, impassable for the
camels unless their riders dismounted and dug a path with their
hands. Many of them, both camels and Arabs, perished from the cold.
Lawrence sent a request to headquarters, Cairo, for heavy clothing
and boots for his men. Instead of receiving them, he got a wireless
message telling him that Arabia was a “tropical country”!
One morning an Arab column awoke on a hillside to find that snow
had drifted over their crouching camels. They dug them out with
the iron spoons which are used for roasting coffee-beans, but all
were dead. Lawrence and his men had to walk barefoot through the
snow for miles before they reached a military encampment. Another
time thirty-four men started from Akaba for Tafileh on camels, and
only one man succeeded in getting through alive. The Arab army had
plenty of camels at this time, thanks, partly, to Prince Zeid. Some
months previous the Turks had sent a large caravan of supplies
toward Medina from Hail, Ibn Rashid’s capital in Central Arabia.
Zeid and his men surprised it at Hanakieh, killed thirty Turks,
captured two hundred and fifty more and also three thousand camels,
two thousand sheep, four mountain-guns, and several thousand
rifles.
Although “the camel is an intricate animal and calls for skilled
labor in the handling,” according to Colonel Lawrence, “she yields
a remarkable return. We had no system of supply: each man was
self-contained and carried on the saddle from the sea-base, at
which the raid started, six weeks’ food for himself. The six weeks’
ration for ordinary men was a half-bag of flour, forty-five pounds
in weight. Luxurious feeders carried some rice also for variety.
Each man baked for himself, kneading his own flour into unleavened
cakes and warming it in the ashes of a fire. We carried about a
pint of drinking-water each, since the camels required to come to
water on the average every three days, and there was no advantage
in our being richer than our mounts. Some of us never drank between
wells, but those were hardy men; most of us drank a lot at each
well, and had a drink during the intermediate dry day. In the heat
of summer Arabian camels will do about two hundred and fifty miles
comfortably between drinks and this represents about three days’
vigorous marching.
“The country is not so dry as it is painted, and this radius was
always more than we needed. Wells are seldom more than one hundred
miles apart. An easy day’s march was fifty miles: an emergency
march might be up to one hundred and ten miles in a day.
“The six weeks’ food gave us a range of over a thousand miles out
and home; and that (like the pint of water) was more than ever we
needed, even in so large a country as Arabia. It was possible (for
me, the camel novice in the army, ‘painful’ was a better word) to
ride fifteen hundred miles in a month without revictualing; and
there was never a fear of starvation, for each of us was riding on
two hundred pounds of potential meat, and when food lacked we would
stop and eat the weakest of our camels. Exhausted camel is poor
food, but cheaper killing than a fat one; and we had to remember
that our future efficiency depended upon the number of good camels
at our disposal. They lived on grazing as we marched (we never gave
them grain or fodder); and after their six weeks on the road they
would be worn thin, and have to be sent to pasture for some months’
rest, while we called out another tribe in replacement, or found
fresh riding-beasts.”
Tradition says that the horse originated in Arabia. The most
beautiful and symmetrical horses are found there. They do not,
however, have the greatest powers of endurance; neither are they
the fleetest.
The Arabs are very fond and proud of their horses. They are really
domestic animals, and it is by no means uncommon for them to occupy
the same tent as their master. The pedigrees of some of them can
be traced back to the fifth century, and registered mares are
seldom sold, although stallions are sometimes given away to
distinguished foreigners. It is maintained that a female, whether
horse or camel, has much more highly developed powers of endurance.
The Arabs oil the hoofs of their horses to keep them from slipping
on the hot sand, and feed them on boiled goat’s-meat to give them
staying powers. They are seldom given all the water they desire to
drink. Even as colts they are continually stinted of water so that
they may become inured to thirst and suffer as little as possible
when crossing the dry parts of the Arabian Desert. Many of the
water-holes of the desert are five days’ travel apart. A horse, of
course, cannot go so long without water; a camel can, however, and
so an Arabian horse will travel by the side of a camel and drink
the camel’s milk, and in that manner make the distance from one
water-hole to another.
The foregoing is but a small fraction of the horse and camel lore
familiar to a Bedouin expert. After years of careful study in the
Arabian and Syrian deserts, Lawrence confessed to me that often he
could not size up his dromedary correctly.
Photograph: PANORAMA OF AKABA
Photograph: COLONEL JOYCE