Camel hair

“ To this day, indeed, camel's hump cut into slices and dissolved in tea is counted a relish by the Tartar tribes.
Camel's skin is made into straps and sandals, while brushes and ropes, cloth and tents, sacks and carpets, are made entirely from camel's hair.
Every year toward the beginning of summer the camel sheds its hair, every bristle of which vanishes before the new hair begins to grow. ”

“ These superfine, magical touches are delicate strokes with a camel’s hair pencil at the corners of the eyebrows, the corners of the eyelids, corners of the nostrils and of the mouth, changing the angles up or down as may be required, and so changing the very shape of the features so delicately that the art cannot be detected. ”

“ The camel is not only of greater value than the elephant but perhaps not of less than the horse, the ass, and the ox, when all their advantages are united. He carries as much as two mules, and not only eats less, but feeds on herbs as coarse as the ass. The female furnishes milk longer than the cow; the flesh of young camels is as good and wholesome as veal; their hair is finer, and more sought after than the best wool. ”

“ The flesh of the young camel resembles veal, and is a favourite food of the Arabs, while camel’s milk forms an excellent and highly nutritious beverage, although it does not furnish butter. The long hair is shorn every summer, and woven into a variety of stuffs used by the Arab for clothing himself and his family, and covering his tent. It was in raiment of camel’s hair that John the Baptist appeared as a preacher. The hair imported into Europe is chiefly used in the manufacture of small brushes used by painters, while the thick hide is formed into a very durable leather. ”

“ The fleece of the Bactrian camel ought to weigh about ten pounds, and is used for making a coarse and strong cloth. In the summer time the hair becomes loose, and is easily plucked off by hand, just as sheep used to be “rowed” before shears were employed in removing the wool. The camel in the Zoölogical Gardens may be seen in the summer time in a very ragged state, its fleece hanging in bunches in some parts of the body, while others are quite bare. ”

“ The hair-crop of the camel is one of the staple harvests of the desert area and is of tremendous value for the local manufacture of ropes, shawls, blankets, etc., and for the export trade in camels-hair brushes, used the world over by water-color artists. ”

“ The hair is now ready for the brush-maker, who cups and combs it out, weighs the quantity required, and places it into the ferrules or tin bands. It requires skill to handle the short, slippery hair and keep it in shape. It is not many years since work of this kind was all done abroad. Now, it is claimed by experts that the American manufacture of most kinds of brushes excels the foreign goods. The chiseled camel's-hair brush is something entirely new, and is certainly a very fine brush and well calculated to do smooth, particular work. ”

“ These animals in many respects resemble the camel of the old continent; but differ materially in others. They are less in size, but of a more elegant form; they have a small head without horns, but a large tuft of hair adorns the forehead; a very long, slender neck, well proportioned ears, large, round, full, black eyes, a short muzzle, the upper lip more or less cleft; the body is handsomely turned, the legs long and slender, the feet bipartite, or divided in the hoof like the deer and the sheep; the covering of the body is a mixture of hair and wool. ”

“ It is possible that the very sheep watched over by the shepherds of Judea the night of our Saviour's birth were reared partly for their wool, with a view to rug-weaving.
The camel is useful not only as a beast of burden; its hair is woven into fabrics both fine and durable, chief of which are rugs, beautiful, much desired, and costly; the younger the animal the more is its hair esteemed. The natural colors harmonize readily with the furnishings in most rooms, and the soft texture of the best ones is attractive. ”

“ In Bokhara, the camel is watched while the fine hair on the belly is growing: this fine hair is cut off so carefully that not a fibre is lost; it is put by until there is enough to spin into a yarn, unequalled for softness, and then it is dyed all manner of bright colors, and woven in strips eight inches wide of shawl patterns, such as—with all our pains and cost, with all our Schools of Design, and study of nature and art—we are not yet able to rival. These strips are then sewn together so cunningly that no European can discover the joins. ”

“ Can you wonder, then, that the air of Blue Town is made hideous with the shrieking of the camels as, to test their strength, they are made to kneel while one thing after another is piled on their backs, and made to rise under each new burden, until they can rise no longer?
"Sometimes while the camel is kneeling a man gets upon its hind-heels, and holds on by the long hair of its hump; if the camel can rise then, it is considered an animal of superior power"—according to the writer above quoted. ”

“ The one-humped camel is in more general use, and a good one will carry a load of six or seven hundred pounds with ease. The mule camel is more powerful than either of its parents, and also more docile and capable of greater endurance. It grows to a very large size, but is low in proportion to its bulk, with stout, bony legs, and a large quantity of coarse, shaggy hair on its haunch, shoulders, neck, and even on the crown of its head, which gives it a strange, somewhat fantastic appearance. Its colour varies from light grey to brown, though it is as often nearly black. ”

“ Camels’-hair of annual growth would vary in fineness according to circumstances, and might be used either for the coarse raiment of prophets and dervises, or for the costly shawls, to which Ctesias alludes. Fine wool, adapted to the latter purpose, might also grow, as in the goat and beaver, beneath the long hair of the camel. It has been doubted whether cloth so fine and beautiful as Ctesias asserts, could possibly be obtained from camels. ”

“ Some naturalists say that the camel cannot exist in cold countries; these writers must have wholly forgotten the Tartarian camels, which, on the contrary, cannot endure the least heat, and which certainly could not exist in Arabia.
p. 209The hair of an ordinary camel weighs about ten pounds. It is sometimes finer than silk, and always longer than sheep’s wool. The hair growing below the neck and on the legs of the entire camels is rough, bushy, and in colour black, whereas that of the ordinary camel is red, grey, and white. The Tartars make no sort of use of it. ”

“ Dresses are not cut that way now; and the trimming is as old as the hills. I guess that has been made two or three years, that dress. And nobody wears a shawl now—unless it's a camel's hair. Nobody would, that knew any better."
"What is a camel's hair?" said Matilda.
"A peculiar sort of rough thick shawl," said Judy. "People wear them because they set off the rest of their dress; but country people don't know enough to wear them. Ask aunt Zara to get you a camel's hair shawl. ”

“ They have great tufts of hair hanging down on their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beards because of the great store of hair hanging down at their chins and throats. The males have very long tails, and a great knob or flock at the end, so that in some respects they resemble the lion, and in some other the camel. ”

“ His head is disproportionately long and large, quite sufficient in these dimensions to fit a camel. He is generally a hollow-backed, pot-bellied creature, about the size of a yearling calf, with ungainly, sloping haunches, and long, coarse hair. ”

“ Most professionals and many amateurs are familiar with the use of the camel's-hair brush to avoid failures of this character, and many of them use a brush for local development in certain cases where it is necessary or desirable. ”

“ Their feet have to be soft and padded to enable them to run over the sand with ease; and hard horny patches must protect their knees and all other portions of the body liable to touch the sweltering surface when they lie down to rest themselves. Finally, they can all endure thirst for long periods together; and the camel, the most inveterate desert-haunter of the trio, is even provided with a special stomach to take in water for several days at a stretch, besides having a peculiarly tough skin in which perspiration is reduced to a minimum. ”

“ There is a world of expression in a camel's face, misleading often to stranger, but with a human deceit.
The face lends itself particularly to varied and strongly marked expression. The nostrils will open and close with a great flexibility, and the lips and eyebrows are more loose and mobile still. What more the machinery may camel want for the facial expression of his ill qualities? With such a lip and nose he can sneer as never can human thing; this at the humble person who brings him no biscuit. He can guffaw coarsely—and with no sound beyond a rare grunt. ”

“ The camel stretches and twists and feels its food with this thick, split lip as if it were two fingers. He doesn't seem to look at his food at all. So you are quite ready to believe he has never learned not to eat poisonous plants that grow on the desert. A herd of browsing camels has to be watched as close as a flock of silly sheep.
Everything about a camel is as queer as if you had dreamed him in a nightmare. His neck and legs look too long and sprawling for his body. ”

“ With the approach of winter an antediluvian rival is introduced upon the scene, in the shape of the well-known two-humped camel, which is then shaggy, dignified, and in really grand form. Intolerant of heat, but impervious to cold, the camels, after passing the summer on the grass-lands of the Mongolian plateau, are brought down in droves to the great fair held on a large open space outside the Northern Wall. The coming of the camels with their bronzed and heavily booted riders is like a whiff of the free air of the desert. ”

“ On the score of beauty the camel has no reason to be proud. His neck and head are ill-shaped and suggest an overgrown turkey; his feet move awkwardly and with an appearance of gout, rheumatism, and spring-halt; his skin looks like an old boot that has been exposed to wind and rain for half a year; and his shape generally is as beautiful as that of a gnarly apple. My camel had a grotesquely colored skin ”

“ She is on her feet in a second, weeping and wringing her hands—with chagrin, not pain. The camel is unshipping his load backwards. He goes through the clumsiest of evolutions as mats, sticks, and the weirdest collection of parcels wrapped in skin, slide over his tail. ”

“ There is a lustrous, suffused softness in the large hazel orb that is the rarest beauty in a human eye, and so remarkable is this feature in the camel, that I wonder it has never fallen into use as a poetical simile. They do not shun the gaze of man like other animals, and I pleased myself often when the suridjee slackened his pace, with riding close to some returning caravan, and exchanging steady looks in passing with the slow-paced camels. ”

“ Again, the camel alone of all ruminants has incisor-teeth in the upper jaw, which, with the peculiar structure of his other teeth, make his bite, the animal’s first and main defence, most formidable. The skeleton of the camel is full of proofs of design. Notice, for example, the arched backbone constructed in such a way as to sustain the greatest weight in proportion to the span of the supports; a strong camel can bear 1,000 pounds’ weight, although the usual load in Oman is not more than 600 pounds. ”

“ He has no beauty, like the horse, with smooth, round body, arched neck, and clean limbs. The only pretty feature of a camel is his ears, which, instead of being long like a donkey's, are small like those of a mouse. ”

“ 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." ”

“ When receiving his load or his rider, he lies on his belly, the legs gathered under him, and during the process or even in anticipation of it, gives forth the most horrible moans or growls. Anything more hideous than the voice of a camel when he is discontented can scarcely be conceived; the tone varies from the grunting of a pig in extremis, to the last braying note of a donkey, or the deep growl of a lion; and during the daily processes of getting ready for the march, the chorus produced by some thirty camels receiving their loads is something too horrible for description. ”

“ Shivering, we chuckled over the morning toilet of the camels, who turned their faces disconcertingly upon us, sneering with long yellow teeth, and bubbling as if their mouths were full of pink soapsuds, when they realized that we were laughing at them.
Incidentally we learned why the Baby Sphinx accompanied our caravan uninvited. His name is Salih; and he came because there's a very important camel (the property of his father) who refuses to eat or stir without him. It is a most original and elaborate camel. ”

“ And when dead the Arabs eat his flesh for food, use his leather to make sandals, and the big broad shoulder-blades are used as slates in the day-schools in many parts of Arabia. A camel march is the standard of distance among the Arabs, and the price of a milch camel is the standard of value among the Bedouins of the desert. The camel is the most patient animal in existence, and yet he often has an ugly temper and is undoubtedly stupid to a degree. He will never attempt to throw you off his back, but if you fall off he will never dream of stopping for you ”