Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ At night, when a caravan is in camp, the little children of the chief drink cups of the camel's thick, cheesy milk mixed with water. On the chief's table is camel flesh, as juicy and tender as beef. The herders wear robes and turbans of brown, camel's hair cloth. The master sleeps under a camel's hair tent. Without this ugly, stupid, useful beast, the hot deserts of the Old World would lie unpeopled and unknown. The camel knows nothing of his value and cares less. Like the desert itself, he submits to be used, but remains wild. Sullen and forbidding, he holds his master a stranger. ”

“ To the children of America the camel is as strange and interesting as many of the fiercest wild animals. We know less about him than we do about bears. He tells you very little about himself, and he shows no curiosity about the crowds that visit his pen at the zoo. He gazes over people's heads in a dreamy way, just like that old stone sphynx head that stares across the desert in Egypt. One bright little boy once said: "A camel is a great, big, ugly puzzle." ”

“ A caravan, or passenger and freight train of camels, travels fifty or more miles a day across the burning sand and rocky hills of the deserts of Sahara and Arabia. So the helpless baby camel is put into a hammock, and swung from one side of a big, two-humped freight camel. The nurse may carry half a ton of other things beside,—leather bags of water, bales of cloth and dates, jugs of oil and blocks of rock salt. All day long the nurse swings along at a rocking gait. The baby must feel much as a human baby feels when rocked in a cradle. ”

“ He never seems to know or to care for his driver, or for a master who may have brought him up from a baby. He looks very wise and meek and good-tempered. But really, he has as little sense as a sheep, is as ill-tempered as a cross bull, and as stubborn as amule. He works, but not willingly, as a horse does. If he had as good a mind as the elephant, no man could make him work at all.
In the hot, dry desert regions the camel is the horse, the cow and the sheep of the Arabian herders and traders. He carries all the burdens, he furnishes flesh and milk for food, and hair for weaving cloth. ”

“ Camels are very stupid animals. If the mother could not see her baby, even if it was on her own back, she would be apt to think he had been left behind. Then she might turn and bolt for the last camping place. On the nurse-camel she can see him, and she follows contentedly.
A camel isn't really a wild animal, and he isn't really tame. He is too stupid to be either one or the other. For many hundreds of years the camel has been one of the most useful animals to men, because of his great strength, and his endurance of heat, thirst and hunger. ”

“ If you could see the camel at home where he "does handsome," you would forget what an ugly, ungainly beast he is. You would think how wonderfully he is made for the work he has to do. No other animal can live and carry great burdens in such a climate, on such scant supplies of food and water.
It is a wonderful thing to see a camel caravan start from a town on the edge of the desert. There are hundreds of animals in a great yard, tons of goods in bales, dozens of drivers and passengers, and a swarm of dogs. The owner of the caravan is a white-robed and turbaned Arab chief. ”

“ The people turn their robes over their heads and huddle in the shelter of the loaded humps. Above the roar of the wind and the hissing and pelting of sand and pebbles, can be heard the low moaning and hard breathing of the camels. ”

“ An animal has faded away and left nothing but its mouth! This animal is called the sympata, and is a member of the sea cucumber family. Whenever this animal fails to get food for some time, it seems to say to itself: "If I wasn't so big I wouldn't be so hungry;" ”

“ The starfish has nerves, as we have already learned. These animals are called starfish because a great many of them are shaped like five-pointed stars. The body is in the center, and the rays correspond to our legs and arms. The nerves run along each ray. At the tip of each ray is a little dim eye, and a filmy covering that takes the place of an eyelid. Each ray is really a branch of the stomach. Little canals run from the stomach, which is in the center of the starfish's body, out to the end of each ray. ”

“ In his old home he is a draft animal, too. He carries burdens over snow-covered plains and even mountains. He sleeps out of doors on the snow in gales of icy wind. He eats, not only hard, bitter plants, but fish, bones and tough skins. ”

“ Whenever we make a specialty of anything we can always do it better. It is when animals come to have two feet, as in the case of man or the ostrich—or four feet, as with squirrels—that they can run and climb trees and build houses and do other things that the sea urchin never even dreams of. ”

“ Of course there are many strange and interesting things about these animals as there are about everything in the great book of nature, when you come to look at it closely. Probably the amoeba doesn't have as much trouble with his stomach as you do sometimes when you eat more than you should; for if the part of himself he happens to use for a stomach today gets out of order, he can use the other side of himself for a stomach tomorrow, and so give today's stomach a rest. That is the best thing a boy can do for his stomach when it gets out of order. ”

“ When the suckers are made firm and strong by being filled with water taken into the little animal's mouth, they are firm enough to walk with. (Don't you see how in the starfish, Nature is using over again the sucker foot of the anemone, and his water-filled "petals"?) ”

“ He can go for a week without water, and when no other is to be found, can drink the salt, bitter waters of dead seas. On the desert he can carry heavier burdens and endure greater hardships than the one-humped dromedary, although he is burdened with an arctic coat of wool and hair. He is the ox of the earth's waste places, as the dromedary is the riding horse. ”

“ Animals like the sponge and the sea-anemone rank higher in the scale of life than the amoeba because they are hollow-bodied. The next higher step is taken by the group of animals to which the starfish, the sea urchin and the sea cucumber belong. They may be said to have real stomachs. The sponge and the anemone only have a special place in the body set apart for digesting food. ”

“ The sea urchin lays eggs, and from these eggs come the young urchins. (What other animal have we already found, that lays eggs?) When they are babies they don't look a bit like their parents. And here is another thing that the sea urchin does that you will remember when we come to kangaroos. Some of the sea urchins carry their babies in pouches. They fold their spines over their babies just as you carry a doll in your arms. ”

“ The fleetest of foot can travel a hundred miles a day, the slowest only twenty-five.
The first thing the owner looks at is the hump. No camel is taken with the caravan unless its hump is big and solid. The hump is the camel's pantry shelf full of fat, to be drawn upon when food is scarce. ”

“ For food, after a day's travel, a camel is given a small measure of hard, sugarless dates or dry beans. Besides, he crops leafless twigs, thistles and thorny shrubs. Camels will eat anything. They will chew their own leather bridles, or tent cloth. One witty writer has said that a camel can make a breakfast from a Sunday newspaper and an old umbrella. ”

“ Don't go too near a camel's head. Sometimes, for no cause at all, he has a terrible fit of rage. Then he tries to bite and to k;ck the person nearest. The first thing you are sure to notice, and to laugh at, is the queer way in which he chews his food. ”

“ If it still cannot find enough to eat, it drops off another piece—and so on until there is nothing left but its mouth. Then, if it gets something to eat, it begins growing again, and so replaces all those parts of itself that it threw away. The spider and the lobster can grow new legs lost in a fight or accident. ”

“ They seem to suffer. Yet, when the storm is over, they rise and rock on as before, across the burning waste.Although the Bactrian or two-humped freight camel is a native of the high, cold plains of Central Asia and North China, he thrives and works just as well in the heat and drought of the desert. ”

“ Although he is three feet high, and heavier than a bossy calf when he is born, he is so weak and wobbly on his legs that he can scarcely walk. Without his mother's milk he would die. The mother has to go with the caravan of hundreds of other camels. ”

“ He looks over every animal carefully. There are slenderly built racing dromedaries, or one-humped camels, with hair so fine that it is used for making artist's paint brushes and dress goods. And there are stout, short-legged, two-humped freight camels as shaggy as bears. ”

“ Every foot of hundreds of camels is examined. A torn or bruised pad is cleaned, dressed with healing salve and tied up in rags. The animals are hobbled by strapping one hind foot up to the knee, so they cannot stray. ”