Thus, the camel bears all the marks of serfdom. Large naked callosities of horny hardness cover the lower part of the breast and the joints of the legs, and although they are never wanting, yet they themselves give proof that they are not natural, but that they have been produced by an excess of misery and ill-treatment, as they are frequently found filled with a purulent matter.
The back of the camel is still more deformed by its single or double hump than its breast or legs by their callosities; and as the latter are evidently owing to the position in which the heavily burthened beast is forced to rest, it may justly be inferred that the hump also, which merely consists of an accumulation of fat, did not belong to the primitive animal, but has been produced by the pressure of its load. Even its evident use as a store-house for a desert journey may have contributed to its development, as Nature is ever ready to protect its creatures, and to modify their forms according to circumstances; and thus, what at first was a mere casual occurrence, became at length, through successive generations, the badge and heir-loom of the whole race.
Even the stomach may, in the course of many centuries, have gradually provided itself with its water-cistern, since the animal, after a long and tormenting privation, whenever an opportunity of satisfying its thirst occurred, distended the coats of that organ by immoderate draughts, and thus, by degrees, gave rise to its pouch-like cavities.
The hardships of long servitude, which have thus gradually deformed the originally, perhaps, not ungraceful camel, have no doubt also soured its temper, and rendered its character as unamiable as its appearance is repulsive. ‘It is an abominably ugly necessary animal,’ says Mr. Russell, in a letter dated from the camp of Lucknow; ‘ungainly, morose, quarrelsome, with tee-totalling propensities; unaccountably capricious in its friendships and enmities; delighting to produce with its throat, its jaws, its tongue, and its stomach, the most abominable grunts and growls. Stupidly bowing to the yoke, it willingly submits to the most atrocious cruelties, and bites innocent, well-meaning persons, ready to take its part. When its leader tears its nostril, it will do no more than grunt; but ten against one it will spit at you if you offer it a piece of bread. For days it will march along, its nose close to the tail of the beast that precedes it, without ever making the least attempt to break from the chain; and yet it will snort furiously at the poor European who amicably pats its ragged hide.’
The camel seems to have been rather harshly dealt with in this description; at any rate, it may plead for its excuse that it would be too much to expect a mild and amiable temper in a toil-worn slave.
Which of all four-footed animals raises its head to the most towering height? Is it the colossal elephant, or the ‘ship of the desert’? No doubt the former reaches many a lofty branch with its flexible proboscis, and the eye of the long-necked camel sweeps over a vast extent of desert; but the Giraffe embraces a still wider horizon, and plucks the leaves of the mokaala at a still greater height. A strange and most surprising animal, almost all neck and leg, seventeen feet high against a length of only seven from the breast to the beginning of the tail, its comparatively small and slanting body resting on long stilts, its diminutive head fixed at the summit of a column; and yet, in spite of these disproportions, of so elegant and pleasing an appearance, that it owes its Arabic name, Xirapha, to the graceful ease of its movements.
The beauty of the giraffe is enhanced by its magnificently spotted skin, and by its soft and gentle eyes, which eclipse even those of the gazelle, and, by their lateral projection, take in a wider range of the horizon than is subject to the vision of any other quadruped, so as even to be able to anticipate a threatened attack in the rear from the stealthy lion or any other foe of the desert.
GIRAFFES AND ZEBRAS.
The long tail, adorned with a bushy tuft of flowing black hair, no doubt renders it good service against many a stinging insect; and the straight horns, or rather excrescences of the frontal bone, small as they are, and muffled with skin and hair, are by no means the insignificant weapons they have been supposed to be. ‘We have seen them wielded by the males against each other with fearful and reckless force,’ says Maunder, in his excellent ‘Dictionary of Animated Nature,’ ‘and we know that they are the natural arms of the giraffe most dreaded by the keeper of the present living giraffes in the Zoological Gardens, because they are most commonly and suddenly put in use. The giraffe does not butt by depressing and suddenly elevating the head, like the deer, ox, or sheep, but strikes the callous obtuse extremity of the horns against the object of his attack with a sidelong sweep of the neck. One blow thus directed at full swing against the head of an unlucky attendant would be fatal.’