As a rule, the management of camels should be left to Orientals, though the French say their men learned to imitate the Arab camel cries. Our Thomas Atkins is a poor ventriloquist, ill at outland tongues. Like his officers, too, he cherishes the ancient illusion, filtered down from book to book, about the extra water-tank stomach of the camel, and his power of going without water. As a plain physiological fact, the camel has no such chamber, his digestive arrangements are like those of the ox, but simpler, approaching the horse character; and, if he goes without water, it is only because he cannot get it. There are pouches in his stomach, which frequently after death are found to contain fluid; but that they are reservoirs pure and simple is doubtful, says Mr. J. H. Steel in his Manual of the Camel. "It is very certain that the parched traveller who cuts open his dying camel to obtain its water store will thus procure only a very little fluid of a temperature of about 90° Fahr., of a mawkish, sub-acid flavour and an unpleasant odour." He should be watered twice a day in the hot weather, and once in the cool season. It is true, of course, that he has been known to go dry for seven or eight days, but it was labour and sorrow to him. Also, although he can travel twenty miles a day, carrying 360 lbs. weight, he is capable of fatigue as other beasts are, and once out of condition does not regain his strength in less than six months. And in spite of his unfriendly and unsympathetic disposition, it is a fact that, like the rest of God's creatures, he is more tractable under kind treatment that when bullied and roughly handled. Of a man we sometimes say "he has an unfortunate manner," nor do we always mean it, for such a manner often shows the aggressive selfishness and ill-temper that command fortune and respect. The supercilious expression framed in the camel's lips, which disclose with savage threat the long upper teeth, denied by nature to other ruminants, and his curiously indifferent air, are real misfortunes to him. We bow respectfully to the camel-tempered man of private life, but it is hard to be civil to a beast whose face is a sculptured sneer.
The long-shanked, cushion-footed creature is especially good at fording rivers where the bottom is sandy. A drove going across will sometimes make a ford practicable for horses, acting like a roller on a loose road, but a few yards of greasy clay will throw many a camel. A fair slope is not much of an obstacle, but a steep hill of slippery wet clay, up which a mule goes gaily, is a sad business for the camel. Nature has made his shoulder, chest, and fore-legs strong, but the attachments of the hind limbs are weak and ill-considered. So the beast is liable to dislocations of the hip in climbing, or, as the British soldier says, "he splits 'isself up." Some Afghan short-legged breeds are good climbers, but of most the Arab saying holds good: "Which is best for you, O camel, to go up hill or down? May God's curse rest on both wherever met, quoth the camel." None the less, at this moment long strings are pacing with heavy burdens up and down the hill roads to Kashmir, Simla, and Kábul.
RAJPUT CAMEL GUNS
Camels, like mules, can be used to carry field-pieces, the equipment of a gun being divided among three animals. The indigenous practice was to make the beast himself a gun-carriage, bearing a Zambūrah (wasp), a piece like our old falconet or like the heavy swivel muskets sometimes seen in English armouries, intended for the tops of a ship or the stern sheets of a boat. The saddle also carries a rider who holds the heavy wooden stock and fires the gun with a slow match. The lingering nature of this arrangement must in action have lent a lively interest to the evolutions of a gun camel, for there is always the chance that just at the critical moment the beast may sling round and point the gun at its friends. Another camel gun is a sort of mitrailleuse, carrying twenty-one barrels in a framework of iron-clamped wood. Both these contrivances are still in as much use as the brooding pax Britannica allows in Rajputana, especially at Oodeypore and Jeypore, and make a great figure in State processions when salutes are fired. The Sikhs had a great number of camel guns of the Zambūrah type, and at the battle of Sobraon it is said that over 2000 were captured. Some of these still survive in the armoury at Fort Lahore.
Besides his services as a slow-pacing pack animal and as a steed capable of covering long distances at a high speed, the camel has many uses unnoticed by Europeans. He is blindfolded in Sindh and made to go a mill-round, grinding flour or oil seeds; working sometimes in such a confined space, one wonders how they got the huge beast in, or how they will get him out again. He takes the place of the ox at the plough and the well, and acts as water-carrier in parts of Rajputana, on the edges of the Indian desert and in the camel districts of the Punjab. On the Grand Trunk road to Delhi are wonderful double-storied wagons drawn by camels. These old-world contrivances go at the rate of about three miles per hour, and are like nothing so much as the cage wagons of travelling menageries. They are in effect iron cages intended originally as a protection against robbery. The passengers are huddled together and seem to sleep most of the time, and, to do him justice, so does the driver. The most picturesque "property" of the Punjab Government house is a huge char à banc, to which is harnessed a team of four or six fine camels with leopard skin housings and gaily attired riders. The camel van will probably be run off the road by the railway, but modified versions of it must for long survive in the desert regions off the line of rail.
It ought to be unnecessary to say that while one camel is like another to an untrained European eye, there are in India, as in Arabia, carefully classified breeds, though they are not distinctively branded with caste marks, as is the case in the West. One listens to this lore with respect, but it is not easily remembered, nor is it of much importance, save to the camel owner or the Government officer sent forth at tuck of drum to buy or hire all the good camels he can lay hands on. By common consent the very best of the animals of the plain are considered to be those of Bikanir and Jessulmir, Rajput States on the edge of the great Indian desert, where the hot dry air suits the austere Arab constitution of the beast. But it has a wider range of variety than is generally thought, each suited to its habitat, until in the hills the slender, high-caste form becomes square, sturdy, and thickly covered with a coarse, cold-resisting pelage. The two-humped Bactrian camel is prepared by nature to withstand a cold almost as keen and piercing as that the reindeer feels, and yet will breed with the one-humped camel of the burning plain. Signor Lombardini, an authority on cameline anatomy, finds a rudimentary second hump in the ordinary one-humped camel.
After the he-goat, a whole camel seems a large offering for the most pious person to make, but he still occasionally serves as a sacrifice. Colonel Tod wrote that the Great Mogul used to slay a camel with his own hand on the new year festival, and the flesh was eaten by the court favourites. He is certainly eaten, and they say camel in good condition much resembles beef. After his death his bones are valuable, being whiter and more dense than most other bones, and a fair substitute for ivory. But they are neglected except by the lac-turners of Dera Ismail Khan, who use them for the studs and ornaments with which they adorn their ware. Possibly some camel bones are picked by English turners and button-makers out of the Indian bones now imported. It may not be generally known that the attention of traders has been recently drawn to the cattle remains that lie near Indian villages. Each hamlet has its Golgotha, where worn-out animals are left to die. Hitherto, only the vulture, the crow, and the jackal have visited these spots, after the leather-dresser has taken the skin of the last comer. But though it never occurred to the Oriental that they could be of any use, Western science, like the giant in the child's tale, grinds bones to make bread. So the village bone-heaps are swept up and shipped to Europe. Perhaps a day may come when the people, awaking to their value, will cry out that they have been robbed. The bone heaps will certainly be missed by the scientific Indian agriculturists of the future, but there is no way of keeping them in the country. Learned authorities on economic questions say it is a mistake to use customs duties with any beneficent intention, just as literary critics say it is bad art to write a story with a purpose, and both have some right on their side. Otherwise, in the interests of India, one would like to impose a heavy export duty on wild bird skins, feathers, and bones, and a crushing import duty on aniline dyes and Members of Parliament.
THE LEADING CAMEL OF A KAFILA (AFGHANISTAN)