ve and ten dollars,
shall we buy? Others are buying." "By no means," they told them. "They
are stolen or strayed property, and you will repent it if you touch
them." Others bought and feasted on camel steaks, and camel soup, and
camel kibby, but the Protestants would not touch them. In a day or two,
the cavalry of the Turks came scouring the country for the camels, as
they were the spoils of war. Then the poor fellaheen were sorry enough
that they had bought and eaten the camels, for the Turks made them pay
back double the price of the beasts, and the Protestants found that
"honesty was the best policy."

The camel is very sure footed, but cannot travel on muddy and slippery
roads. The Arabs say "the camel never falls, but if he falls, he never
gets up again." They carry long timbers over Lebanon, on the steep and
rocky roads, the timber being balanced on the pack saddle, one end
extending out on front, and the other behind. Sometimes the timber
begins to swing about, and down the camel goes over the precipice and is
dashed to pieces.

The Arabs say that a man once asked a camel, "What made your _neck_ so
crooked?" The camel answered, "My neck? Why did you ask about my neck?
Is there anything else straight about me, that led you to notice my
neck?" This has a meaning, which is, that when a man's habits are all
bad, there is no use in talking about _one_ of them.

Perhaps you will ask, did you ever eat camel's flesh? Certainly. We do
not get it in Beirut, as camels are too expensive along the sea-coast to
be used as food, but in the interior towns, like Hums and Hamath, which
border on the desert or rather the great plains occupied by the ten
thousands of the Bedawin, camel's meat is a common article in the
market. They butcher fat camels, and young camel colts that have broken
their legs, and sometimes their meat is as delicious as beefsteak. But
when they kill an old lean worn-out camel, that has been besmeared with
pitch and tar for many years, and has been journeying under heavy loads
from Aleppo to Damascus until he is what the Arabs call a "basket of
bones," and then kill him to save his life, or rather his beef, the meat
is not very delicate.

The Arab name for a camel is "Jemel" which means _beauty_! They call
him so perhaps because there is no beauty in him. You will read in
books, that the camel is the "ship of the desert." He is very much like
a ship, as he carries a heavy cargo over the ocean-like plains