Their humps are composed of a fatty substance. Day by day the hump diminishes, and the fat is absorbed into the animal's system, furnishing nourishment until food is forth-coming.
Thus, with these stores of water and fuel on board, the "ship" can go on for a fortnight, or even a month, absolutely without eating or drinking, while things that other creatures—unless, perhaps, it be some bird of the ostrich tribe—would never dream of touching, will furnish forth a sumptuous meal for a camel. Off a handful of thorns and briers he can make an excellent breakfast, and I believe he will not disdain anything apparently so untempting as a bit of dry wood.
Provided that at certain periods of the year a short holiday is allowed the camel for pasturing, quite at its leisure, to recruit its strength and fill that store-house on its back with fuel, it will serve its master, on such meagre fare as I have mentioned, for full fifty years. Still, all work and no play is as bad for camels as it is for boys.
Even with plenty of fuel on board, the desert-ship owners are wise enough not to impose too long journeys upon their heavily laden fleets.
A camel's foot is of a peculiar formation. It is wide-spreading, and is provided with fleshy pads or cushions; and if after a certain march rest were not given, the skin would wear off these pads, the flesh become bare, bringing consequences direful indeed. Probably the suffering creature would kneel down, fold its long legs under its body, and stretching out its long neck on the ground, calmly announce in camel language that it would go no further. It is no use whatever to try to make a camel go against his will.
If it once refuses, you have but two ways open to you: you may quietly lie down beside it until it is ready to move, or you may abandon it forever. Other course there is none.
It is a curious fact that, notwithstanding the softness of the camel's foot, it can walk over the sharpest stones, or thorns, or roots of trees without the least danger of wounding itself, and that what this strange beast most dreads is wet and marshy ground.
We read that "the instant it places its feet upon anything like mud, it slips and slides, and generally, after staggering about like a drunken man, falls heavily on its side."
The use of the camel to the various peoples of the East is almost incalculable. Many an Arab finds his chief sustenance in the cheese, butter, and milk of the mother camel. The flesh of young camels is also often eaten.
The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is said to have reckoned camel's feet one of the daintiest dainties of his sumptuous banquets, and he considered a portion of tender camel roast a thing to be by no means despised. To this day, indeed, camel's hump cut into slices and dissolved in tea is counted a relish by the Tartar tribes.