CHAPTER XI
The Camel
The camel has very little to do with the kind of jungle I have been telling you about; but he has much to do with the desert. A desert is another kind of wild place. As I told you before, jungle means any wild place; but usually, of course, there are lots of trees and bushes and thickets in it. But we call the wild place a desert when trees and bushes and thickets will not grow there, because the ground is all covered with sand. In the desert there is nothing but sand all over the ground, and not a single tree or a tiny blade of grass anywhere, as far as you can see.
And that is the place where camels can do some very wonderful things, as I shall now tell you. The camels do not actually live in the desert all the time, but in countries quite near there.
First I must tell you that there is only one country to-day, called Central Asia, where camels are still found wild. In all other places they are not wild any more, for in those countries people have lived for many thousand years; so the people caught all the camels once upon a time, and tamed them.
Since that time the camels have been used by people in those countries for their work, just as we use horses here; and rich people in those countries count their wealth by the number of camels they have. Just as we say here that a rich man has a million dollars, or two millions, or three millions, so in those countries a man is thought to be rich who has one thousand camels, or two thousand, or three thousand.
It was just the same in those countries in olden times. You have read in your Bible history that Job was once a rich man, as he owned thousands of camels.
You will see from the pictures facing page 128 that there are two kinds of camels; one kind has a huge hump on the middle of his back; and the other kind has two humps, with a gap between. The One-Hump camel is called an Arabian camel, or a dromedary. Once upon a time he lived in the country called Arabia; that is the country from where you get your lovely old stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin. But now the One-Hump camel also lives in other countries near there. These are all very hot countries, with many miles of desert here and there.