Camwood

“ The ash made from the wood of the same tree is sold for use as a mordant in indigo dyeing. Camwood is a red dye-wood prepared from at least three different species of trees—Baphia nitida, Pterocarpus tinctorius, and Pterocarpus sp.—and is almost entirely used locally for staining the human skin or dyeing leather. Fibre plants do not appear to be cultivated in any part of the country, but occur to some extent in all the forested parts. Hibiscus guineensis and Dombeya buettneri are usually employed for native ropes, and the bark of Sterculia barteri is said to be prepared for the same purpose. ”

“ Iron is one of the oldest mordants known and is largely used in wool and cotton dyeing. It is almost as important as alum. The temperature of the mordanting bath must be raised very gradually to boiling point or the wool will dye unevenly. A general method of dealing with copperas is to boil the wool first in a decoction of the colouring matter and then add the mordant to the same bath in a proportion of 5 to 8 per cent of the weight of the wool, and continue boiling for half an hour or so longer. With some dyes a separate bath is needed, such as with Camwood or Catechu. ”

“ The chief industry of Cambrai is the weaving of muslin (batiste) and other fine fabrics (see Cambric) ; wool-spinning and weaving, bleaching and dyeing, are carried on, as well as the manufacture of chicory, oil, soap, sausages and metal boxes. There are also large beet-sugar works and breweries and distilleries. Trade is in cattle, grain, coal, hops, seed, &c.
Cambrai is the ancient Nervian town of Camaracum, which is mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary. In the 5th century it was the capital of the Frankish king Raguacharius. ”

“ Probably nowhere in the world is to be seen a spot so desolate and so wretched. The village is planted at the extreme west angle of the Camargue. It can be reached by one road only, rough to travel over, and impracticable in winter. This road leaves Arles, or rather Trinquetailles, opposite Arles, traverses the marsh of the Grand Mar, follows the dyke of the river, and then threads its way among morasses, and over soil white with salt, and burning under the rays of the sun. ”

“ It is much larger than either Truro, Redruth, or Penzance, numbering 15,000 inhabitants, most of whom live upon mines, either directly or indirectly. Indeed, many of them live in the mines, and merely come home to sleep. Thus it is that all day long Camborne seems almost a city of the dead. It is a town whose houses, if not squalid, are the most abjectly characterless of any I have ever seen, stony granite affairs, which wear the look of having once upon a time been inhabited—but a very long while ago, and meanwhile having been preserved from decay by some mystic preservative power. ”

“ There is scorn in their eyes, as they circle about their wives. High on their splendid camels, they have a regal air, making the great brutes turn and double as easily as horses, and shouting angrily if anyone goes near the water-sellers. This is their last watering-place before the Tomb is reached, and to trifle with a Bedouin’s water is like trifling with his wives. And no wonder they wear this princely mien, for the whole Imperial Desert is their home. Upon the slower camels in their lordly train, sometimes four abreast, their women, all carefully veiled, sit with the little children. ”

“ Hurstwood was standing, his coat open, his thumbs in his pockets, the light on his jewels and rings relieving them with agreeable distinctness. He was the picture of fastidious comfort.
To one not inclined to drink, and gifted with a more serious turn of mind, such a bubbling, chattering, glittering chamber must ever seem an anomaly, a strange commentary on nature and life. Here come the moths, in endless procession, to bask in the light of the flame. ”

“ The life of a gamekeeper is miserable and hard in the Camargue. At least ours has his wife and children round him; but a little further on in the marsh, a horse-warden lives absolutely alone, from one year's end to the next, Robinson Crusoe like. In his home-made reed cabin, there isn't a single household utensil not made by him; the woven wicker-work hammock, the three black stones that form the hearth, the tamarisk roots made into stools, even the lock and key made from white wood that secures this unique accommodation.
The man himself is at least as strange as his dwelling. ”

“ Entering this river of Guendari, to the north-east is the great city of Cambay, inhabited by Moors and Gentiles. It is a very large city of handsome houses of stone and whitewash, very lofty, with windows, and covered with roofs in the Spanish fashion; it has very good streets and squares, and is situated in a rich, fertile, and pretty country, full of abundant provisions. There are in it rich merchants and [65] men of great property, both Moors and Gentiles; and there are many workmen and mechanicians of subtle workmanship of all sorts, after the fashion of Flanders, and all very cheap. ”

“ The town of Cambay had a population in 1901 of 31,780. It is supposed to be the Camanes of Ptolemy, and was formerly a very flourishing city, the seat of an extensive trade, and celebrated for its manufactures of silk, chintz and gold stuffs; but owing principally to the gradually increasing difficulty of access by water, owing to the silting up of the gulf, its commerce has long since fallen away, and the town has become poor and dilapidated. The spring tides rise upwards of 30 ft., and in a channel usually so shallow form a serious danger to shipping. ”

“ It is as monstrous as anything in Dore's illustrations of the Contes Drolatiques and, wherever it wanders, the eye comes back at last to its fantastic bulk. There is no greenery on the rock, nothing but fierce sunlight or black shadow. A line of red hills forms the background of the city, and this is as bare as [Pg 108] the picked bones of camels that lie bleaching on the sand below.
Wherever the eye falls, it sees a camel or a string of camels—lean, racer-built sowarri camels, or heavy, black, shag-haired trading ships bent on their way to the Railway Station. ”

“ If the weather is hot and the soil light, it is well occasionally to leave the short clippings of one mowing upon the lawn to protect the roots.
I do not know if it becomes unmanageable, but, in moderation, I think camomile a very charming intruder on a lawn, and the aromatic scent which it yields to one's tread to be very grateful in the open air. It is pleasant, too, to have a knoll or a bank somewhere, where thyme can grow among the grass. [133] But the subject of flowers that grow well through grass is a large one. ”

“ In Shakespeare's day camomile grew in "the wild field by Richmond Green."
"Our ordinary Camomill [says Parkinson] is well known to all to have many small trailing branches set with very fine small leaves and spreading thick over the ground taking root as it spreadeth; the tops [Pg 246] of the branches have white flowers with yellow thrums in the middle, very like unto the Featherfew, but somewhat greater not so hard but more soft and gentle in handling and the whole herb is to be of a very sweet scent. ”

“ Barnes's Glossary of the Dorsetshire Dialect, appended to his Poems of Rural Life.
Bunch, A. A blow, or the effects of a blow; and then a blotch, burn, scald, pimple, in which latter senses "bladder" is also often used. The verb "to bunch," to strike, is sometimes heard. See Mr. Wedgewood (as before, p. 269) on its allied forms.
Cammock, The. (From the Old-English cammec, cammoc, cammuc.) The various species of St. John's-wort, so plentiful in the neighbourhood of the New Forest ”

“ And then to eastward the bedroom window of Llanddewi Rectory looked over hill and valley, over high woods, quivering with leafage like the beloved Zacynthus of Ulysses, away to the forest of Wentwood, to the church tower on the hill above Caerleon. Through a cleft one might see now and again a bright yellow glint of the Severn Sea, and the cliffs of Somerset beyond. And hardly a house in sight in all the landscape, look where you would. Here the gable of a barn, here a glint of a whitewashed farm-house, here blue wood smoke rising from an orchard grove, where an old cottage was snugly hidden ”

“ The Camasia esculenta, or edible camas, of whose roots the Indians make bread, grows about eighteen inches high, and bears at top a bunch of star-shaped flowers, of a beautiful lavender color, with a golden centre. The leaves grow from the root, and are lanceolate. The places where they are most abundant usually are called "Camas prairies," and they form a feature of Eastern Oregon and Idaho. They are also plentiful in Western Oregon. The flowering season is about the middle of May, near the Lower Columbia. There are several species of the camas, one of which is poisonous, as noticed above. ”

“ Little fires spring up, built over stones. Voices are low; noises die down one by one⁠—braying of donkeys, gurgling grunts of camels, bleating of goats and kids soon to be sacrificed. Groups gather closely round he fires, for the night air nips. Coffee is made in tiny china cups, and the gaunt heads of the camels thrust forward over the very shoulders of their owners They chew and chew and chew. Those dark bundles in the sand lying apart by themselves, are men already asleep, wrapped from head to feet in sheets of black and blue and white and yellow. ”

“ After changing and changing trains, and stopping at many a roadside station, at last you see, suddenly, over the wild undulating country, the Coniston Old Man and its crags, abrupt on the left, and the lake, long and narrow, on the right. Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a spot it is. ”

“ Camelford has no public buildings of interest. It is situate on very high ground, on a wind-blown waste 700 feet above the sea, exposed to furious gales from the Atlantic; but it has this advantage, that it forms headquarters for an excursion to the Bodmin moors, to Brown Willy (1375 feet) , and Rough Tor (1250 feet) . These tors, though by no means so high as those on Dartmoor, are yet deserving of a visit, on account of their bold outlines, the desolation of the wilderness out of which they rise, and the numerous relics of antiquity strewn over the moors about them. ”

“ Though we generally attach the term ‘camel’ to that species of the camelus found in India, where great numbers are bred by persons who make a very large profit from their labors, the animal under consideration, having but one hump, or bunch, on its back, should, properly, be called a ‘dromedary.’ Whatever may be the true designation, the utility of the animal in a climate, and on a soil, to which it is so admirably suited by nature, is indisputable ”

“ Cambusmore (the great creek in Sutherland) ; Cambuscarrig, in Ross, near which a Danish prince (Careg) was buried; Cambuskenneth (the creek of Kenneth, one of the kings of Scotland) ; Camelon (on the bend of the water) , near Falkirk; Cambuslang (the church or enclosure, lann, on the bending water) , in Lanark; Cambus, in Clackmannan; Cambusnethan (on the bend of the R. Nethan) ; Campsie, anc. Kamsi (the curved water) ; but Camus, a town in Forfarshire, is not from this root, but in memory of a Danish general who was slain in battle near the place; Camlyn (the crooked pool) , in Anglesea ”

“ There were seventy camels, soft-eyed gentle creatures, whose flat feet held them up on the soft sand like snowshoes. They bore packs upon their backs which promised good things, and they came straight to the cell of Fronto, where they stopped. And what a welcome they received! The monks threw their arms about the beasts' necks, as they knelt on the sand, and kissed the soft noses as though they were greeting long-lost brothers. They were so glad to see the camels themselves that they almost forgot to wonder whence they came, or what they were bringing. ”

“ Camran. This reminded me that I had reached a fork of the road, where I must either take this whole family into my secret or explain my change of name to my companion. The latter was decided upon as the most feasible. When she emerged and drew a chair to the edge of the veranda to admire the prospect of land and sea I told her that henceforth she must call me by a new name.
She looked inquiringly into my face.
"Do you remember suggesting on the steamer," I asked, "that as we had to lie to others we ought to tell the truth among ourselves? Well, my name is Camran, not Camwell. ”

“ We can ship a couple of carloads of camels to one of the little desert towns, hop out and make the stuff and be back inside of three days. It won't cost much, but we'll get a desert picture that will have atmosphere and color and—all that stuff. By the way, Ben, where are you going to get those camels? From Ward's circus!"
"Sure thing. Billy Ward has got a whole slew of camels—more camels than anything else. Did you ever see that big white dromedary that leads the bunch in the street parade? That's old Aladdin, and take it from me he's some camel."
"A white camel!" exclaimed Montague. ”

“ It is not too much to say that most Chameleons are short-lived in captivity on account of the want of water. Those which are sold by the dealers are generally in a parched condition. Sprinkling the twigs or leaves of their cage with water works a wonderful change in them; the dull, apathetic-looking creatures drink and drink, revive, assume brighter colours, and will soon take food, which they have until then refused {573}obstinately. Once I have even seen a Chameleon, when put into the greenhouse, make straight for a tank and actually drink in gulps. ”