The expression of his soft, heavy, dreamy eye tells its own tale of meek
submission and patient endurance ever since travelling began in the
deserts. The camel appears to be wholly passive--without doubt or fear,
emotions or opinions of any kind--to be in all things a willing slave to
destiny. He has none of the dash and brilliancy of the horse; that
looking about with erect neck, fiery eye, cocked ears, and inflated
nostrils; that readiness to dash along a race-course, follow the hounds
across country, or charge the enemy; none of that decision of will and
self-conscious pride which demand, as a right, to be stroked, patted,
pampered, by lords and ladies.
The poor camel bends his neck, and with a halter round his long nose,
and several hundred-weight on his back, paces patiently along from the
Nile to the Euphrates. Where on earth, or rather on sea, can we find a
ship so adapted for such a voyage as his over those boundless oceans of
desert sand? Is the camel thirsty--he has recourse to his gutta percha
cistern, which holds as much water as will last a week, or, as some say,
ten days even, if necessary. Is he hungry--give him a few handfuls of
dried beans; it is enough; chopped straw is a luxury. He will gladly
crunch with his sharp grinders the prickly thorns and shrubs in his
path, to which hard Scotch thistles are as soft down. And when all
fails, the poor fellow will absorb his own fat hump. If the land-storm
blows with furnace heat, he will close his small nostrils, pack up his
ears, and then his long defleshed legs will stride after his swan-like
neck through suffocating dust; and having done his duty, he will mumble
his guttural, and leave, perhaps, his bleached skeleton to be a landmark
in the waste for the guidance of future travellers.
[Illustration: "MY GOLLY! I'S COTCHED HIM DIS TIME, FOR SURE."]