CHAPTER X
OF CAMELS
"When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our Kafilas wind through the Khyber pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
As the snow-bound trade of the North comes down
To the market-square of Peshawar town.
"In a turquoise twilight crisp and chill,
A Kafila camped at the foot of the hill.
Then blue smoke haze of the cooking rose,
And tent-peg answered to hammer nose;
And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,
Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;
And the bubbling camels beside the load
Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;
And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,
Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."
The ballad of the King's jest.—R. K.
hile some mahouts hint vaguely that the elephant came to India from the farther East, it is an accepted belief that the camel came from the West, i.e. from Arabia. No account is taken of the herds of wild camels seen on the high table-lands of Central Asia. So the saying has it, "The camel let loose, goes westward," or "The camel is a good Mussulman, for when free, he runs towards Mecca." In default of proof that the beast really follows the setting sun, it may be suspected that Oriental fancy, always strong, has more play than Oriental observation, which is often weak. For the camel is a peculiarly Muhammadan creature both in his life of to-day and in his wonderful origin. It was on his back that the body of Shah Ali Shah was laid after death, and he was sent into the wilderness till the Angel Gabriel met him and, taking the rope, led him no man knows whither. Before that ghostly funeral the camel resembled a horse, but the Angel gave him a hump like the mountain into which he disappeared, and feet to spread on the yielding sand, with other anatomical peculiarities, all duly enumerated by good Mussulmans. This story is also told of Moses, the friend of God, or the converser with God, the place of whose sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day. Probably the saying has its origin in the propensity of the stupid camel to stray and lose itself, for it has none of the "homing" faculty so strongly developed in the horse. People who religiously face westward several times a day to pray naturally get an occidental twist in their minds. Nay, there are those who maintain that all the world has this trick, and that, like Wordsworth's friends, we still go "stepping westward." South Australia has not yet discovered a Mecca twist in the thousands of camels it now owns.
The Prophet himself was a camel driver or Serwán, and always cherished the liking of a true Arab for the beast of which he said, "Speak ill neither of the camel nor of the wind; the camel is a benefit to man and the wind is an emanation of the Spirit of God." When he was married to Kadijah, two young camels were slain for the wedding feast.