Major Leonard speaks with the authority of one who has spent sixteen years as a transport officer, and if the suggestion which he makes, based as it is on the observation of the good health and long lives enjoyed by the northern camels at the Zoological Gardens, be adopted by the War Office, the original intention of the founders of the Society, to make their Gardens an example of what was possible in the way of acclimatization, would be fulfilled in an unexpected quarter.
Bactrian Camel. From a photograph by Gambier
Bolton.
The reason for Major Leonard’s suggestion is to be found in the failure in the management of our camel transport in war-time. The natural liking of Englishmen for domestic animals of all kinds is quite equalled by the skill they usually show in their management. Yet the sufferings of our transport animals in war are such as at any other time would cause a pang to the national conscience. It is a fact that the feeling of humanity, which will not tolerate the overcrowding of a cattle-ship, is scarcely shocked when, as in the Afghan War, twenty-thousand camels perish, mainly from mismanagement, or when a transport officer can write of the fate of those creatures in the Nile Expedition—“Seeing, as I have done, hundreds and thousands of camels die from sheer exhaustion, brought on by neglect and ill-treatment, arising from down-right stupidity, obstinacy, and ignorance, is enough to make one ashamed of having had any connection with the business.” The push across the Bayuda Desert was a race against time; yet it hardly seems consonant with the usual fairness of Englishmen to their “mounts,” that of the thousand camels used, probably not one survived the treatment it received; and Count Gleichen, writing after service with the Camel Corps throughout the war, says, “I am afraid we looked upon them as mere machines for carrying, and hardly thought of their sufferings from hunger and thirst as long as they could be whacked along.” This was after the battle of Metemmeh. Of the same example of cruel and disastrous mismanagement Sir C. Rivers Wilson says—“The camels had been without water for from six to seven days, having been accustomed to water every second or third day. They were on one-third rations, which they did not always get. For thirty-seven hours they were tied down so tightly in the zeribah before Abu Klea, that they could not move a limb, and I doubt if they were fed at all during that time. Then for sixteen hours they were on the march, and tied down for another twenty-four hours without any food. The result almost justified the saying, that we thought we had found in the camel an animal which required neither food, drink, nor rest; we certainly acted as if the camel were a piece of machinery.” Except during the time of battle, all this cruelty to the animals and waste of mobility in the force was unnecessary. The so-called “desert” was full of food and well supplied with water. On the day before the retreat from Metemmeh, a camel convoy of the friendly Kababish came in across the desert in perfect condition. “It made my mouth water,” writes an officer, “to see these magnificent, well-fed brutes swinging along, each with its load balanced on its hump.” His own beast had holes in its skin into which you could have put a cocoa-nut. Read in the light of these facts, the inimitable ballad in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling sums up the miseries of the commissariat-camel, and the incompetence of the uninstructed British private to manage it, is an invitation to substitute common-sense and kindness for ignorance and cruelty in the treatment of the four-footed army which helps to fight our battles.
Major Leonard has been engaged in this service in Afghanistan, South Africa, India, and the Soudan. That is in itself a credential for his book; for no one not possessed of an equable and reflective temper could have gone through his experiences and yet be enthusiastic over his branch of the profession, and, above all, over what he justly calls that “little-known and strangely unsympathetic animal,” the camel. Yet Major Leonard’s practical experience leads him to the conclusion that, of all transport animals, it is the best for military use in the East. Incidentally, he gives us an historical note on Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s immortal ballad on the Commissariat Camel—
“The driver question in Afghanistan was enough to appal the heart of the stoutest transport officer. They deserted, and soldiers had to be told off to act as drivers. On December 20, 1878, I had to leave 161 bags of Commissariat stores on the ground, many of the drivers having deserted, and taken their camels with them. This is a common trick of the Sind drivers. They go back by a circuitous route, and in many cases—it is said—are re-engaged by the Commissariat.”
The place assigned to the camel in this estimate need not raise any bright ideal of the creature as a travelling companion. Mr. R. Kipling’s remark, that you might as well lavish your affections on a luggage-van as on a camel, still holds good. But there is a balance in favour of the camel when compared with other Oriental beasts of burden. The experiences of a single march, noted by Major Leonard, gives a glimpse of the comparative “cussedness” of different transport animals, which is as fresh as it is amusing. The occasion was the advance of the Candahar force from Quetta in the last Afghan War. At the crossing of the river Lora, at the foot of the Kojak-Amran range, the camels were swallowed up wholesale in the quicksands, owing entirely to their extraordinary stupidity. We quote this incident first, because the one serious drawback to the use of the camel consists precisely in this strange insensibility to danger—
“The river was not very broad, and not more than two feet deep in any part of the stream; but the bed was full of quicksands, in whose treacherous depths many an unfortunate camel perished. It is only natural to suppose, that by sheer force of example an ordinarily intelligent animal would have learnt to avoid the danger, by seeing those which preceded it sinking deeper and deeper out of sight. Yet these camels plodded steadily on into the quicksands, though those which had preceded them were disappearing so fast that in many cases only their necks and heads were visible.”
Not a single horse, elephant, or mule, was lost in this way in crossing the ford, and they one and all displayed a marked and consistent caution which was clearly the result of reason—
“One elephant, which the officer commanding the 6-11 Battery of the Royal Artillery lent to assist in extricating some camels which were being engulfed in the quicksands, showed an amount of sagacity which was positively marvellous. It was with the utmost difficulty that we could get him to go near enough to attach a drag-rope to one camel I wanted to rescue. In spite of our being about fifty yards from the bank of the river, he evinced the greatest anxiety, while his movements were made with extreme caution. Despite coaxing, persuasive remonstrance, and at last a shower of heavy blows dealt upon his head by the exasperated mahout, this elephant stubbornly refused to go where he was wanted, but, with his trunk shoved out in front of him, kept feeling his way with his ponderous feet, placing them before him slowly, deliberately, and methodically, treading all the while with the velvety softness of a cat, and taking only one step at a time. Then suddenly he would break out into a suppressed kind of shriek, and retreat backwards in great haste. When the animal had nearly completed a circuit of the ground with the same caution and deliberation, he advanced to within ten yards of the poor camel, but not another inch would he move, though several men were walking between him and the camel without any signs of the ground giving way.”