"I may add, that my friend, the Belgian Consul at Seville, happens to be with me now, and quite agrees with what I have said. It would be very interesting if you could obtain any further news about these strange wanderers."
To this the following foot-note was appended by the Editor of The Field:—"It is somewhat strange that our correspondent should ask for further information respecting animals whose existence he regards as 'utterly incredible.' But the statement has not been made that there are wild camels anywhere near Seville. The districts explored by Mr. Abel Chapman are far removed from human habitation, and are not those in which herds of domestic cattle are ever seen. The fact that Mr. Chapman described for the first time the singular nests of the flamingo, which exists there in colonies, that have never before been figured [see next chapter], proves that neither Inhlwati nor his friend can know the country well, and that 'every foot of ground' cannot possibly, as he states, 'be open to daily inspection.' The fact that the camels have been observed on different occasions by two well-known naturalists—men trained to the close and accurate observation of animals, who both give their names—should have entitled their remarks to a different reception."
We have inserted the above extracts in full partly because they are a good example of the reckless way some people are prone to rush into print, and who, because they may have some acquaintance with a subject, think they are thereby entitled to speak as with complete knowledge. The marismas of Lebrija are, as a matter of fact, many miles away on the other side of the Guadalquivir.
No doubt it is a "startling statement" that wild camels are roaming at large in Europe, or anywhere else—it would hardly seem more incredible if a herd of hippopotami were reported in the Upper Thames. The camel has never within historic times been known to exist in a wild state: it has always been the servant of man, a beast of burden and domesticity.[24] More than this, a certain physical disability or cause has been alleged to exist, which, if correct, would render their permanent continuance, in a natural state, an impossibility. Nor could any region be well conceived so ill-adapted—indeed repulsive—to the known habits and requirements of an animal always associated with arid sandy deserts, as the Spanish marismas, which, always marshy, are subject to actual inundation during six months out of the twelve.
The discussion had, at any rate, the merit of evoking the following additional information respecting the Spanish camels, their introduction and habits. First I will quote a letter from my co-author, dated from the Coto Doñana, March 1st. "Dear Chapman,—Your letter has reached me here, where we are shooting deer for the last time this season. I am glad I happened to be on the spot, having an opportunity of asking the guardas and others for the facts respecting the camels, which I hope will be sufficient to convince the sceptics of their existence here and of the truth of your observation, which I am surprised to hear has been called in question.
"The camels were brought here first from the Canary Isles by Domingo Castellanos, Administrador to the Marques de Villa Franca, in 1829, he intending to make use of them in the Coto for transporting timber, charcoal, &c. The descendants of this Domingo, the two brothers Barrera of Almonte, now own the fifty or sixty animals which make the marisma lying between the Coto proper and the Guadalquivir their feeding-ground. They seldom appear on the wooded parts, remaining winter and summer in the marisma, moving with the greatest ease in winter through the mud and water, from one island to another, occasionally coming to the woods to pasture on the tops of the young pines.
"You know, from your flamingo experiences, how vast a waste is comprised between the borders of the Coto and the river (Guadalquivir) which accounts for the camels being seldom seen except by herdsmen and others (Mr. Abel Chapman, to wit) whose business may take them out into the watery wilderness. Manuel Ruiz, conocedor of the Villa-Vilviestre herd,[25] now tells me that at about three-quarters of a league from the Cerro-Trigo he saw yesterday three females with their young, which he judged to be about twenty days old.
"I can send you any further particulars required, and if the unbelievers will not swallow your camel, we must do what Mr. Saunders did with the doubted specimen [of the crane's egg], and bring before them a Spanish-born camel, hump and all. Nothing is easier. Sport pretty good so far—five stags, four pigs, two lynxes."
We are also kindly privileged to quote the following statement of Lord Lilford's personal observation of the wild camels:—"I was not aware till I saw Saunders' note at the end of your paper and read the subsequent correspondence in The Field, that any one doubted the existence of camels in a virtually wild state in the marisma. I once saw four or five of them together at a vast distance, and, in 1872, came across their 'spoor' several times when exploring the marismas of the Coto. Their existence is perfectly well known to many people at San Lucar, and, no doubt, also at Jerez. I heard of them first in 1856.... What Mr. Buck says of the habits of the camel is, as far as I can remember, pretty much what I heard from several of the guardas of the Coto in 1872.... My son reminds me of what I had quite forgotten, viz., that he and our doctor saw some camels in the marisma somewhere on the proper right of the western branch of the Guadalquivir last May (1888), when I was confined to my ship by an attack of gout in the right hand."
