The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

The fandak was a large rectangular enclosure open to the sky everywhere save in the cloisters round the inside walls. It was filthily dirty, and full of flies and insects, but Basha the baby camel noted none of these things. He passed his early days wandering round the cloisters to look at the half-starved mules and donkeys that were brought in there for their much needed rest, and when the heat was greatest and the flies most insistent, he would lie contentedly by his mother’s side. For all the fandak’s limitations Basha had been born in fortunate hour. His mother’s services were not required in field or city, heavy spring rains had made food plentiful and cheap, so that she was well fed, and the little one, who by the way was two feet odd inches high when he was born, enjoyed an unfailing supply of milk. Had he come into the world at another time or place, his mother might have been put to work hard before he was three months old, her milk might have been required for cheese, and he would have pined and died as so many baby camels do. Even when the summer waned and the autumn rains starred the fields with flowers of bewildering beauty, Basha stayed with his mother on a farm outside the city gates. The caravan came back in the season of cool weather and in place of the merchandise they had taken to the South, the camels brought slaves for the Sok el Abeed, but they could not go out again. Between them and the Soudan the fierce veiled Touaregs of the desert were in arms, and in the direction of the coast the chief camel road was held by the braves of a tribe that was in open revolt against Morocco’s Sultan.

So, while Abdullah swore strange oaths by the Prophet’s beard, and declared that the men of the desert were descended from devils and the men of the western province from apes, little Basha grew strong and unshapely, and life was an affair of sunshine and good milk. Day by day the farmer spread his mother’s food before her on a cloth; dried beans, crushed date stones and a very small measure of corn and chopped hay, and Basha would sniff at it with very little interest. If the farmer himself was absent the cloth might be forgotten, and then Mother Camel would make an angry noise in her throat and refuse to eat, and little Basha would suffer accordingly.

“Why must you have a cloth to eat from?” he asked her one day, when she was gurgling indignantly while the rats made merry at her expense, and she made no attempt to check their depredations.

“It is Camel Law,” replied his mother. “If we were to eat our food from the bare ground we should take all manner of dirt into our mouths, and in a little while it would make us ill, perhaps fatally. Our inside arrangements are very delicate and complicated. In the fandak two camels and no more will feed from one mat or cloth, and it is right that there should be precedence at meal-times. The most important camels should be fed first. That is etiquette, and we set a great store by it. Indeed, if this consideration is overlooked we let our masters know about it.”

“But when you leave your food, I get less milk,” remonstrated Basha.

“You can’t begin too early,” explained the Mother Camel, “to understand that all camels must suffer. It is part of our life to work hard, to endure ill-treatment and to be deprived of our fair share of good things. Down to the present your good luck has been astonishing. Your brother and sister, one born seven years ago and the other four, died of starvation before they had lived through one summer. I myself was born in the country of the black men south of the Atlas mountains, and had to come here with my mother across the desert before I was six months old.”

Basha took small account of these warnings. He could do no more than judge life as he found it, and do credit to his environment by growing to be a fine specimen of his race. When at length he was taken from his mother he was fully a year old, and he enjoyed some idle months on the farm land, living for the most part upon green herbage, and straying far and wide in search of camel thorn, r’tam, tamarisk and mimosa. When he had found his favourite bush, he would run his upper lip over the leaves as though to assure himself that they were what he sought, but if he knew what he liked he did not know what was good for him. A wandering Bedouin shepherd came upon him one morning just as he was beginning to sniff with appreciation at some leaves that would have finished his career at once, and thereafter Basha’s liberty was curtailed and he had his first experience of the manacles. They were made of steel and fitted round each fore-leg above the ankle. This was a most effective device, for a camel walks moving both legs on the same side simultaneously, and the steel was capable of arresting the walk altogether. He had to endure many long and painful hours in this confinement.

As he was quite unconscious of having done anything to deserve such treatment, and knew nothing of his own stupidity, Basha was full of indignation and kicked with his hind-legs at all passers, exhibiting early signs of bad temper. Then the first evil days came to him, and in the picturesque language of his master he “ate the stick” until he knew fear and understood the virtue of docility. But in after days when he was goaded beyond endurance he always kicked out with his hind-legs, and he learned that many camels do the same when they are angry, although their fore limbs are much stronger than the hind ones. Perhaps the early use of the shackles accounts for this tendency, which is common to the most of African camels.

If his training in those early days was cruel, Basha was no worse off than his fellows. He had to learn to endure the saddle and the pack, to kneel at word of command, and to go with the other camels on short journeys carrying some light load in preparation for the trying days to come. He grew very slowly but managed to preserve a good condition, clearly to be seen in the rising hump and in the well-covered skin. Camels that were overworked or underfed lost their hump, and if they had any serious illness, their skin looked like a moth-eaten fur.

In his fifth year when he was reckoned fit for the full measure of work Basha was a very finely developed beast, even though his ugliness was undeniable. His long, thick upper lip was divided in two, and this peculiarity accounted in part for his perpetual sneer; his eyes, the one redeeming feature of his head, were shaded by heavy brow and coarse eyelashes; his ears were very small and round and he acquired the curious power of compressing his nostrils that was to be so serviceable in days to come. His legs were long and thin, and the great shapeless feet in which they terminated looked very absurd; his walk was little better than an awkward flat-footed shuffle. His tail was short and stumpy, and his mode of resting had brought well-defined hard growths to his chest and knees. He could travel without fatigue over endless miles of level ground, but hills tired him at once; and he could swim sturdily though nothing but the most severe thirst would make him drink of running water. His early-day nervousness had gone though he was still restive when taken from his companions. He seldom called as he had been in the habit of doing when he was young, but with manhood, if the term be permissible, he had developed a violent temper, and there were seasons of the year when only Abdullah dare approach him. At these times he would grow very excited, he would repeat the horrid gurgling noise that his mother had made, and would go about with a hideous pink bladder hanging from one side of his mouth. At the first sign of this state among his male camels Abdullah would seek to reduce their rage by bloodletting. The camels would be hobbled in turn and told to sit down, and after a cord had been tied tightly round the neck two small incisions would be made just below the cord. This was an effective cure for ferocity, but was not always a possible remedy when the camels were on the march, for it left them very weak.