ts
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.

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. For
three weeks this bare condition lasts. His camelship looks as if he had
been shaved without mercy from the tip of his tail to the top of his
head, and during this shaven season he is extremely sensitive