INTRODUCTION OF CAMELS. Remarks on the Introduction of Camels as a means of Transportation on the IN traversing the broad plains and deserts of the interior of the continent, the subject of using camels as a means of transportation oftened occurred to me; and on my return, I learned that the subject of introducing them had been discussed in the newspapers, and that a resolution had been offered in Congress, asking for an appropriation to test the experiment. A memoir on the subject, at considerable length, written with much ability, and embracing a vast number of curious, interesting, and important facts, by George R. Gliddon, Esq., was laid before the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate. This committee asked for an appropriation to enable the Secretary of War to import thirty camels and twenty dromedaries of various breeds, together with ten Arabs, familiar with their habits, whose services might be retained for two years. The plan proposed was to send an efficient agent to Egypt, who was to proceed to the interior of the country, as far as Nubia, and there procure the finest specimens of the best breeds; for the camel, like the horse and the ox, presents many varieties. On the African coast these animals are found in great numbers; but they are said to be inferior to those of the interior. If the experiment is to be fairly tested, and made a Government undertaking, of course the very best breeds, both from Africa and Asia, should be obtained There is, perhaps, no gentleman in the United States whose opinion on this subject is entitled to so much weight as that of Mr. Gliddon, who was a resident in the Levant for twenty-three years, eight of them as United States Consulat Cairo, and who grew up with the camel and the Arab. His early days were connected with Oriental life, traversing at various times the deserts of Arabia and northern Africa. Mr. Gliddon, knowing the interest I felt in this subject, and that I had had some experience in my various journeys across the deserts and plains of the interior of our continent, has kindly placed in my hands the results of his inquiries into the history of the camel, and of its introduction into various parts of Asia and Africa, from which he has permitted me to make such extracts as I deemed suitable, for a brief paper like the present. From my experience of nearly three years with horses, mules, asses, and oxen, and with wagons, carts, and packs, I do not hesitate to hazard the opinion, that the introduction of camels and dromedaries would prove an immense benefit to our present means of transportation, that they would be at great saving to animal life, and would present facilities for crossing our broad deserts and prairies not possessed by any other domestic animals now in use. Many have imagined that the camel, being indigenous to certain parts of Africa and Asia, would not thrive in America; but from the climate, and the food upon which he would be compelled to live in the districts where he would be required to labor, I doubt not his habits will be found to be as well adapted to them, as to one half, or two thirds, of the region where he now thrives. Less than four centuries have passed since the introduction of the horse, ox, ass, mule, goat, sheep, pig, dog, etc., into America, and they now exist in myriads from the shores of the Arctic Sea to Cape Horn. Like man, they seem to adapt themselves to every clime; nature modifying them to the heat or cold, to the arid plains or the marshy lands, where they become domiciled. The camel is as strict VOL. II.-37 ly a domestic animal as the horse, his existence in a wild state being now doubtful ;* and there is no reason why he may not as well adapt himself to our deserts and prairies as to the steppes of Tartary or the Sahara of Africa. On the forty species of animals reduced at this day to a state of domestication, Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, a distinguished French naturalist, remarks that "of these thirty-five are now cosmopolitan, as the horse, dog, ox, pig, sheep, and goat. The others have remained in the region of their origin, as the lama and the alpaca on the plateau of Bolivia and Peru, or have been transplanted only to those countries which most approximate to their birth-place in climatic conditions, as the Tongusian reindeer at St. Petersburg. Out of the thirty-five domestic species possessed by Europe, thirty-one originated in Central Asia, Europe, and Northern Africa. Only four species have been contributed by the two Americas, Central and Southern Africa, Australia, and Polynesia; although these portions of our globe contain the greater number of zoological types. In consequence, the great majority of domestic animals in Europe are of exotic origin, and hardly any are derived from countries colder than France; on the contrary almost all were primitively inhabitants of warmer climates."† Widely as the camel, or "ship of the desert," as it is called in the poetic language of the East, is now dispersed over all parts of Asia and of Central and Northern Africa, there is historical evidence to show that there was a period when he was a * Humboldt quotes Chinese and Turkish authors who affirm that the wild camel, as well as wild horses and asses, is still to be found in Eastern Turkistan and in the countries north of China. Cuvier believes that, if such is the case, they have merely become wild after their owners had given them their liberty. In the interior of Sonora are thousands of wild cattle which are fiercer than the buffalo. The wild horses, or mustangs, of Texas and Northern Mexico are also known. But all these are the offspring of domesticated animals. La domestication du Llama, etc. Projet d'une Ménagerie Nationale d'Acclimation. stranger, even in Africa, and when his sphere in Asia was comparatively limited. Now, his geographical diffusion is equal to "The camel," says Humboldt, "was entirely unknown to the cultivated people of Carthage, through all the centuries of their flourishing existence, until the destruction of the city. It was first brought into use for the armies by the Marusians, in Western Lybia, in the time of the Cæsars; perhaps in consequence of its employment in commercial undertakings by the Ptolemies, in the valley of the Nile. The Guanches inhabiting the Canary Islands, who were probably related to the Berber race, were not acquainted with the camel before the fifteenth century, when it was introduced by Norman conquerors and settlers. In the probably very limited communication of the Guanches with the coast of Africa, the smallness of their boats must necessarily have impeded the transport of large animals. The true Berber race, which was diffused throughout the interior of Northern Africa, is probably indebted to the use of the camel, throughout the Lybian desert and its oases, not only for the advantages of internal communication, but also for its escape from complete annihilation and for the maintenance of its national existence to this day. The use of the camel continued, on the other hand, to be unknown to the negro races; and it was only in company with the conquering expeditions and proselyting missions of the Bedouins through the whole of Northern Africa, that the useful animal of the Nedschd, of the Nabatheans, and of all the districts occupied by the Aramean races, spread here, as elsewhere, to the westward. The Goths brought the camels as early as the fourth century to the Lower Istros (the Danube), and the Ghaznevides transported them in much larger numbers to India as far as the banks of the Ganges.* Other authorities agree as to the comparatively recent introduction of the camel and dromedary into Northern Africa. Baron Humboldt distinguishes two epochs in their distribution there, "the first under the Ptolemies, which operated, through Cyrene, on the whole of the north-west coast, and the second under the Mohammedan epoch of the conquering Arabs;" while the dromedary, now so much in use, was only propagated in the region of Algiers as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. A number of curious facts have been brought together by Mr. Gliddon, to show that the camel was not used in the earliest Egyptian times; the most satisfactory evidence of which is, that it does not appear on any of the Pharaonic monuments: a conclusion to which Champollion-Figeac had arrived. "But one thing worthy of remark," says that distinguished archæologist, "is that there is not found on any monument the figure or mention of the camel; a native of Arabia. This valuable animal appears to have been unknown to the ancient Egyptians for service." § *Karl Ritter, Asien, vol. viii., Part 1, p. 610, 757. Bodichon, Etudes sur L'Algérie et L'Afrique, p. 62. ↑ Viercs of Nature, Lond. ed. p. 52. that of most other domesticated animals. "He has followed," says Mr. Gliddon, "the radiations of war, commerce, and emi In the journeys made by the patriarchs of the Scriptures into Egypt they were accompanied by camels; these animals were also employed in bearing the productions of Arabia to that country, but they were always the property of aliens, and their residence there was but temporary. So "during the stay of the Hebrews in the land of Goshen, no allusion is made to camels, save in Exodus, ix. 3, whether owned by themselves or by their Egyptian rulers. On the contrary, the especial mention of asses as the animals on which Jacob's sons carried their sacks of corn over the desert of the Isthmus of Suez *—of wagons furnished by the Egyptians to bring up Jacob from Canaan +-of cattle, horses, flocks, and asses, as the only zoölogical property the famishing Egyptians could give in exchange for bread,‡-combined with the notable fact that, in the account of the Mosaic exodus, horses attached to chariots and cattle are the only quadrupeds enumerated;—all these accumulated evidences, I repeat, amply confirm hieroglyphical and historical negatives of the naturalization of camels in Egypt, at any time prior to the Persian invasion, B. C. 525." (Gliddon's Memoir, MS.) One of the most elaborate treatises on the geographical distribution of the camel in the Old World, is that of the distinguished geographer and ethnologist Karl Ritter, who in his great work has devoted 150 pages to the history of this quadruped. I shall merely quote the results of his investigations to show the wide extent of the present diffusion of the camel. These natural limits are established as follows:-"Towards eastern and south-eastern Asia, by the tropical, sultry, maritime, Indian, and Farther Indian climate of the Elephant-land and fluvial zone of the Cocoa-forests;-towards the north on the Upper Jenesei, Baikal, and Irtysh, by the Reindeer-zone of the sub-polar climate of 58° to 56° North Latitude;-beyond the flat steppe-lands of the nomadic tribes, by agriculture upon the European culture-ground, with the fixed dwellings of its inhabitants. In the Maghreb, or northern half of the African continent, the Lybian camelzone, towards the north (from the Erythræan East to the Atlantic West), is exhibited without limit, as far as the Berber races, as well as Moors and Bedouins, inhabit the Sahara and the Oases. But south of that it is limited by the zone of tropical rains, or the wet season, along the valleys of the Senegal, the Niger system, and the Bahr el-Abiad. Here the expanse of sand and gravel changes into a luxuriant, thickly-wooded, fruit-bearing soil, subject to inundation, before which the organization of this desert-animal shrinks back, and where begins the belt of the central Negro States of Soudan, or the Land of the Blacks, with whom asses and bullocks, as universal beasts of transport, thrive, being better suited to the climate, or where the negro has become his own bearer of burdens." § *Genesis, xlii. 27; xliii. 18, 24. + Id. xlv. 21, 27; and xlvi. 5. Karl Ritter, Asien. Id. xlvii. 17. |