“They died out. In the late Pliocene Period they were all gone from the East and only browsed on the vegetation of California and the plateaus of the Southwest. Then the cold of the Ice Age struck North America and the North Pole ice covered half the United States. The giraffe-camels were not rugged enough for this, and as but one baby camel was born a year, they could not live.
“The llamas had found their way to South America, over which the ice-sheet did not creep; the true camels had found their way to tropical Asia and Africa. These species survived those thousands of years of terrible cold by hugging the equator and so passed on into modern life, hardy and secure, while their North American ancestors, the giraffe-camels, failed in the Battle of Life. So, you see, Perry, although we always think of the camel as a foreign animal, he really is an emigrant from our own United States.”
“We ought to get him back, then,” said Perry. “Why couldn’t we?”
“It was tried,” replied the professor, “during the California gold-rush of ’49. Some camels were imported for the purpose of carrying supplies to the army posts in the arid regions, but for some reason or other, they never flourished. I suppose the herd was not large enough to keep the animals from inbreeding. So the camels were turned loose.”
“Are there any still left?”
“I doubt if there are any, now. Once in a long while, there is a report of a camel having been seen in Arizona. But the Indians killed most of them during the first twenty years after they were set free, and mountain lions disposed of the remainder. After all, Perry, a camel is an inoffensive ruminant, depending only on his speed for escape from any powerful carnivore. He is protected in the desert, for no heavy creature, such as tigers, live there, and hyenas and jackals eat dead flesh. But a mountain lion would easily kill him in a fight, and a camel would have to come to the wooded country for food and water. I don’t think camels will ever be plentiful in America again. The broncho and burro need fear no rival.”
“So far as that goes,” rejoined Perry, wincing as he rose up at the signal that the caravan was about to move on again, “I’d sooner try to sit the worst bucking horse that ever was foaled than have my back twisted like a double-back-action corkscrew by this queer-jointed beast.”
Past thirteen pyramids the caravan trod, following the ancient road beside the Nile, sometimes on the summit, looking over the broad cultivated region where the Nile had overflowed and left its deposit of fertilizing mud; at other times over the edges of the cotton fields themselves, always at that one unswerving rate of two and a half miles an hour.
Perry sat frontwards, then sideways, then put his whole weight on the cross-piece, then wriggled around to some other pose. But it made very little difference. No matter what position he assumed, that corkscrew-like racking walk from side to side nipped the base of his spine. Toward the end of the day, he got off and walked. His uncle did the same, but the Englishman, who had spent months at a time in a camel-saddle, seemed quite content. The road was firm at this place, lying in the valley of the Nile at the base of the sandstone terraces, peppered with graves, where for six thousand years Egypt has buried her dead, high above possible flooding from the waters of the Nile. The sandstone was laid down when the southern part of Africa was an island and all the Sahara desert was the bed of a great sea.
After five caravan hours of travel, the long line of camels halted near Sakkara, not far from the ancient step-pyramid. Though the day was still young, Perry was stiff and sore from riding, and tired from missing his sleep the night before. None the less, under Antoine’s suggestion, he walked two miles to the ruins of the ancient city of Memphis, the capital of Egypt in the dawn of history. Wonderful and impressive as were the old temple of Ptah and the colossi, it was with readiness that Perry turned his steps homewards to the caravan, and when he reached his tent he fell asleep without even realizing the fact that this was his first night on a caravan halt.