heavy or light. He carries half a ton of goods for hundreds of miles across wide deserts, with ease. But he groans just as loud when he is asked to carry two little children about his track in the zoo. With more groans he heaves his big body up and starts to run, or rather to rock.
If you get sea-sick on a boat you would better not try to ride a camel. He lifts both feet on one side at the same time, tilting his body sideways. Then he lifts the two feet on the other side. So you roll over and back. Tossing and pitching, heaving and rolling you go, as if you were in a sail-boat on rough water. In a minute you are sick at the stomach. Very soon your back aches from the jolting, and you get a sharp pain at the waist line. Maybe you think this is why the camel is called "the ship of the desert." It isn't. It is because he carries people and goods across wide seas of sand.
Haven't you heard people say: "Handsome is as handsome does?" 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. 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. Indeed, there are as many breeds of camels as there are of horses. 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. Next, the feet are looked over to see that there are no stones between the toes, and no thorns or bruises in the soft footpads. Just before starting the animals are given all the water they can drink. A camel can drink enough water to last him three days. His second stomach is a honey-comb of little tanks for storing water.
