42 IN A LAND DESERTED slow, steady pace hour after hour if a baggage camel, and trots his easy, sliding step if a riding one. His hair provides the material for the ropes which enthral him, and his dung, in default of wood, a useful fuel. He is guided by a pat on either side of the neck ; a rope round his muzzle, with a thin string threaded through the skin of the nostril, gives some control.

Hurry is foreign to the baggage camel's nature, deliberation of a supercilious kind the main point in his creed.

Yet this admirable animal has his drawbacks. He can take nothing cheerfully ; he labours under a feeling of continual injustice ; he growls when he is loaded ; it is equally an imposition on his goodnature when he is relieved of his burden. He takes a delight in grabbing at his rider when mounting into the saddle, and rejoices in rising suddenly before it is safely entered. And the rising of a camel is (to the rider) a matter of moment : first, the sudden tilting back as he gets to his knees, next, an equally violent thrust forward as the hind-legs come into action, and then back once again.

On the march he loves to be the last of the file ; he avails himself of every opportunity of unexpectedly swinging aside a couple of yards of neck to pluck a mouthful of desiccated thorns ; he picks out the worst of tlie path so that he may have an excuse for stumbling (and a ten-foot stumble is no joke) ; he drops on every possible occasion into the walk which renders the deficiency of a waist joint obvious in the human frame ; he is the prey of huge