WILD CAMELS
It was during these aquatic rides in search of the nesting-places of the
flamingo that we first fell in with wild camels.
Vague yarns, more or less circumstantial, that such animals wandered
over the farther marismas, we remember as early as 1872. The thing,
however, had appeared too incredible for consideration--at any rate, we
gave it none. But in that spring of 1883 we one day found ourselves face
to face with two unmistakable camels. They stood gazing intently about
half a mile away--a huge, shaggy, hump-backed beast, accompanied by a
second not half its size. The pair wheeled and made off ere we had
approached within 400 yards, and something "game-like" in their style
prompted our first and last attempt at pursuit. The camels simply ran
away from us, splashing through slippery mud and water, two feet deep,
at double our horses' speed, and raising in their flight a tearing trail
of foam as of twin torpedo-boats.
Since then we have fallen in with camels on very many occasions, singly,
in twos and threes, or in herds of a dozen to twenty and upwards, old
and young together. It is, in fact, only necessary to ride far enough
into the marisma to make sure of seeing some of these extraordinary
monsters startling the desolate horizon, and silhouetted in incongruous
juxtaposition with ranks of rosy flamingoes and flotillas of swimming
waterfowl.
The whole story of these wild camels and their origin has been narrated
in _Wild Spain_. Briefly summarised, the animals were introduced to
Spain in 1829 by the Marquis de Villafranca (House of Medina-Sidonia)
with the object of employing them in transport and agriculture, as they
are so commonly used on the opposite shores of Africa. But local
difficulties ensued--chiefly arising from the intense fear and
repugnance of horses towards camels, which resulted in numerous
accidents--and eventually the bactrians were set free in the marisma,
wherein they have since lived at large and bred under wholly wild
conditions for well-nigh a century.
We admit that a statement of the existence of wild camels in these
watery wildernesses of Spain--flooded during great part of the year--is
difficult to accept. The camel is inseparably associated with the most
arid deserts of earth, with sun-scorched Sahara, Arabia Petraea, and
waterless tropical regions. Its physical economy is expressly adapted
for such habitats--the huge padded feet and seven-chambered stomach that
will sustain it for days without drinking. Yet the reader was asked to
believe that this specialised desert-dweller had calmly accepted a
condition of life diametrically reversed, and not only lives, but breeds
and flourishes amidst knee-deep swamp.
At the period of which we write the camel was not known to exist on
earth in a wild state, and physical disabilities were alleged which
would have precluded such a possibility. During historic times it had
never been described save only as a beast of burden, the slave of
man--and a savage, intractable slave at that. A little later, however,
the Russian explorer, Préjevalsky, met with wild camels roaming over the
Kumtagh deserts of Turkestan, and in Tibet Sven Hedin has since shown
the two-humped camel to be one of the normal wild beasts of the Central
Asian table-lands.
Wild camels in Europe represented a considerable draft upon the
credulity of readers; and a chorus of ridicule was poured upon the
statement. Men who had "lived in Spain for years"--a foreign consul at
Seville, engineers employed in reclaiming marismas (somewhere else)--all
rushed into print to attest the absurdity of the idea. Limited
experience was mistaken for complete knowledge! Similar treatment was
accorded to our observation of pelicans in Denmark. Ornithologists of
Copenhagen insinuated we did not know pelicans from seagulls; yet the
Danish pelicans are as well known to the Jutlander fisher-folk as are
the Spanish camels to the herdsmen and fowlers of the marisma. Knowledge
is no monopoly of high places.
[Illustration: WILD CAMELS.]
The Spanish camels spend their lives exclusively in the open marisma,
pasturing on the _vetas_, or higher-lying areas, and passing from islet
to islet, though the intervening water be three feet deep. We have
watched them grazing on subaquatic herbage in the midst of what
appeared miles of open water; and, in fact, during wet winters there is
no dry land to be seen. Yet they never approach the adjacent dunes of
Doñana, though these would appear so tempting. By night, however, the
camels sometimes pass so near to our shooting-lodge that their scent,
when borne down-wind, has created panic among the horses, though the
stables are situate within an enclosed courtyard.
[Illustration]
Antonio Trujillo, formerly head-keeper of the Coto Doñana, some years
ago chanced on a camel that was "bogged" in a quicksand (_nuclé_). These
places are dangerous, and it was not till six days later that he was
enabled, by bringing planks and ropes, to drag the poor beast to firm
land. All round the spot where the camel had laid he found every root,
and even the very earth, eaten away. Yet the animal when set free
appeared none the worse, for it strolled away quite unconcerned, and
shortly commenced to browse while still close by.
Young camels are born early in the year, about February, though whether
that is the exclusive period we have no means of knowing.
A curious incident occurred one winter day when we had ridden out into
the marisma expressly in search of camels. It was an intensely cold and
dry season, almost unprecedented for the severity of the frost. When
several leagues from anywhere, a keen eye detected in the far distance a
roving fox. All dismounted, and letting the horses graze, hid behind
them and awaited his approach. Then with only a single _podenco_, or
hunting-dog, _Frascuelo_ by name, after a straight-away run of five or
six miles over the sun-dried plain, we fairly rode bold Reynard down and
killed him.
Six months after the publication of _Wild Spain_ we received the
following letter from H.R.H. the late Phillippe, Comte de Paris, the
owner of the adjoining Coto del Rey:--
_June 17, 1893._
Having read with the greatest pleasure and interest your
description of the wild camels, it struck me that you may
appreciate a photograph taken from nature of one of these
independent inhabitants of the shores of Guadalquivir. I found that
one could only look at them from a distance, and therefore the
enclosed photographs may be of interest. They were taken three
months ago by my nephew, Prince Henry of Orleans. My keepers had in
the early morning separated this single animal from the herd, but
it escaped from them about Marilopez at noon, and when we met with
him near the Laguna de la Madre, and about a mile from the Coto del
Rey, we had only to give him a last gallop to catch him. These
camels spend great part of the year on ground of which I am either
the owner or the tenant, and I do my best to protect them from the
terrible poachers coming from Trebujena. In order to be able to do
this more effectually, I bought yesterday from the heirs of the
landowners who turned them out some seventy years ago, I think, all
the claims they can have on these animals.
We have recently been favoured by the present Comte de Paris with the
latest details respecting the camels. In a note dated August 1910,
H.R.H. writes:--
For some time their numbers have been decreasing, and we no longer
see great troops of them as we used to do eighteen years ago. The
cause of their diminution is certainly the bitter war waged against
them by poachers. The parts of the marisma frequented by the wild
camels lie between the Coto del Rey on the north, the Coto Doñana
on the west, and the Guadalquivir on the south-east. The long deep
channels of La Madre, however, interfere with their reaching the
Coto Doñana, and they chiefly graze in the marismas of Hinojos and
Almonte. The plan pursued by the poachers is as follows:--Coming
down from some of the little villages, they cross the river in
small flat-bottomed boats in which they can creep along the shores
to points where they have seen either the spoor or the animals
themselves during the day. Then drawing near to the camels, under
cover of the waning light, they are able to kill one or sometimes
two, which they skin and disembowel on the spot. The flesh is cut
up into pieces, sewn up in the skin, and, on returning to the
riverbank, secreted beneath the flat bottom-boards of the boat,
thereby evading detection by Civil Guards and douaniers. The men
then sail down the river and sell the meat at San Lucar as venison.
When in the marisma in 1892 I met one day a troop of forty
animals--some old males, their huge bodies covered with thick hair
like blankets; there were also females followed by their
young--fantastic of appearance, owing to the disproportionate
length of their legs, but galloping and frisking around their
mothers as they had done since birth.
Next day my companion and I took lassoes; we encountered a huge old
male, singly, which trotted and galloped round our horses,
terrifying the poor beasts to such an extent that we could not come
near the camel. At length after a fifty-minutes' chase, in crossing
a part where the mud was soft and the surface much broken up by
cattle coming to drink, we overtook him. Thanks to my horse having
less fear than the other, I was presently able to throw a lasso
around the camel, my companion hauling taut the rope to hold the
prisoner fast. The great brute proved very active, defending
himself with his immense flat feet, which he used as clubs, and,
moreover, he bit, and the bite of a camel is venomous. Ultimately I
succeeded in getting a second rope around him and dragging him to
the ground, where he lay like the domestic camel. The photographs
illustrate this episode.
Old males frequently have the hair very ragged and scant,
especially on hind-quarters, and on their knees are great
callosities. The truly wild camels of the marisma are fast
disappearing. A friend has furnished me with the approximate number
now remaining absolutely wild, viz. fifteen or sixteen near La
Macha fronting the Palace of Tisana, besides five enclosed in the
Cerrado de Matas Gordas, near the Palacio del Rey, and belonging to
Madame La Condesa de Paris.
It was owing to the rapid decrease in their numbers, and in order
to save them from extinction, that the Condesa had these
enclosures, known as Matas Gordas, prepared. They contain excellent
pasturage, besides some extent of brushwood; yet the enclosed
camels do not flourish, nor have they ever bred. Big as the
enclosures are, yet the area may be too restricted for them; or it
may be the disturbance due to the presence of cattle and herdsmen
(since the cerrados are let for grazing) that explains this
failure; or possibly the camels resent being enclosed at all. At
any rate the spectacle of troops of camels rushing wildly forward
in all directions is passing away all too quickly, and soon nothing
but the legend will remain.
Truly it is melancholy that the wild camels should be allowed
utterly to disappear, representing, as they do, so extraordinary a
fact in zoological science.
Our friend Mr. William Garvey tells us that in the summer of 1907, while
returning from Villamanrique, crossing the dry marisma in his
automobile, he saw three camels. He drove towards them, and when at 500
or 600 yards, they turned and fled, he put on full speed (sixty miles an
hour), and within some ten minutes had all three camels completely
beaten, tongues hanging out, unable to go another yard!
This will be the first occasion when wild camels have been run down, in
an open desert, by a motor-car!
_February 9, 1903._--This morning, shortly after daybreak, a big
single bull camel passed my "hide" in the Lucio de las Nuevas
within easy ball-shot. He was splashing through water about two
feet deep overgrown with samphire bushes, and "roared" at
intervals--a curious sort of ventriloquial "gurgle," followed by a
bellow which I could still distinguish when he had passed quite two
miles away. With the binoculars I distinguished at vast distance
five other camels in the direction the single bull was taking.
Here we insert a note received from the co-author's brother, J. Crawhall
Chapman:--
Oh, yes! I remember that camel-day--it's never likely to die out of
my memory, for never did I endure a worse experience nor a harder
in all my sporting life. It promised to be a great duck-shoot on
the famous "Laguna Grande"; but for me, at any rate, it began,
continued, and ended in misery! At 3.30 A.M., on opening my eyes, I
saw Bertie already silently astir--probably seeking quinine or
other febrifuge, for we were "housed" (save the mark) in Clarita's
_choza_, a lethal mud-and reed-thatched hut many a mile out in the
marisma. Nothing whatever lies within sight--nothing bar desolation
of mud and stagnant waters, reeds, samphire, and BIRDS, relieved at
intervals by the occasional and far-away view of a steamer's
funnel, navigating the Guadalquivír Sevillewards.
Well, we arose, looked at what was intended for breakfast, and
groped for our steeds. I was to ride an old polo-pony named
_Bufalo_, an evil-tempered veteran with a long-spoilt "mouth" that
ever resented the Spanish curb. Cold and empty we rode for two long
hours in the dark, always following the leader since otherwise
inevitable loss must ensue--splosh, splosh, through deep mud and
deeper water, never stopping, always stumbling, slipping,
slithering onwards. I feared it would never end; and, in fact, it
never did--that is, the bog. For when I was finally told "Abajo"
(which I understood to mean "get down"), and to squat in a miry
place so much like the rest of the swamp that it didn't seem to
matter much where it really was--well, it was then only 6 A.M. and
horribly cold and desolate.
[Illustration: WILD CAMELS OF THE MARISMA.
PHOTOS BY H.R.H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.
CAPTURING A WILD CAMEL.
THE CAPTIVE.]
An hour later the sun began to rise. I had not fired a shot--nor
had any of us. As a duck-shoot it was a dismal failure. By eight
o'clock the sun was quite hot, so I tried to find a stomach--for
breakfast. Failed again; but drank some sherry, and then lay down
till noon in decomposing and malodorous reed-mush and mud. Never a
duck came near, so shifted my stye to an old dry ridge--apparently
an antediluvian division between two equally noisome swamps. Here I
tried to sleep, but that was no good, for a headache had set
in--possibly the effects of sun and sherry combined! I felt the
sweeping wind of a marsh-harrier who had found me too suddenly and
was half a mile away ere I could get up to shoot.
At four o'clock I signalled for _Bufalo_ to take me back to our
hut, distant eight miles, the only guide being that morning's
outward tracks.
It was on this ride that there occurred the incident of the
day--thrilling indeed had it not been for the headache that left me
cheaper than cheap. Having traversed some three miles of mud and
water, suddenly I saw ahead the "camels a-coming!"--eleven of them
in line, the last a calf, and what a splash they made! Knowing how
horses hate the smell and sight of camels, and _Bufalo_ being a
rearing and uncomfortable beast at best, I felt perhaps unduly
nervous. The camels were marching directly across my line of route
and up-wind thereof. If only I could pass that intersecting point
well before them, _Bufalo_, I hoped, might not catch the
unwholesome scent. I tried all I could, but the mud was too sticky.
The camel-corps came on, splashing, snorting, and striding at high
speed. _Bufalo_ saw them quick enough, I can tell you--he stopped
dead, gazed and snorted in terror, spun round pirouetting
half-a-dozen times, reared, and would certainly have bolted but
that he stood well over his fetlocks in mud and nigh up to the
girths in water. I could not induce him to face them anyhow; but
remember, please, that I was handicapped by the mass of
accoutrements and luggage slung around both me and my mount, to
wit:--Several empty bottles and bags, remains of lunch, some 500
cartridges, three dozen ducks, a Paradox gun, waders, and brogues!
[Illustration]
Meantime the camels passed my front within 100 yards and then
"rounded up." Having loaded both barrels with ball, I felt safer,
and pushed _Bufalo_ forwards--to fifty yards. Then the thought
occurred to me, "Do camels charge?" _Bufalo_ reared, twisted, and
splashed about in sheer horror, and then--thank goodness--the
corps, with a parting roar, or rather a chorus of vicious gurgling
grunts, in clear resentment at my presence on the face of the
water at all, turned and bolted out west at full speed. I was left
alone, and much relieved.
The adult camels were of the most disreputable, not to say
dissolute appearance, great ugly tangled mats of loose hair hanging
from their shoulders, ribs, and flanks, their small ears laid
viciously aback, and with utterly disagreeable countenances. I half
wish now that I had shot that leading bull--he would never have
been missed! I don't suppose that any one has been nearer to these
strange beasts than I was that day; certainly I trust never to see
them so near again--never in this world!
* * * * *
While preparing these pages for press we are grieved to hear of the
death of our friend Mr. William Garvey, whose adventure with the camels
is narrated above (p. 279). Mr. Garvey, who was in his eightieth year,
was a _Gentil Hombre de la Camara_ to King Alfonso and had on various
occasions, with his nephew, Mr. Patrick Garvey, entertained the monarch
on his splendid domain.