Naturalist.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 364, 30 April 1903, Page 7

Naturalist.

WILD CAMELS. »«aUBING the last days of the United fll<» States Congress in 1851, when 2gS|g the Army ' Reorganisation Bill was under consideration, Jefferson Davis, then Senator from Mississipi, offered a bill providing for the purchase and introduction of thirty camels and twenty dromedaries, with ten Arab drivers and the necessary equipage. Mr. Davis thought the animals might be used with effect again st the Indians on the western frostier. Drinking enough water before they start to last for 100 miles j travelling continually without rest at the rate of ten or fifteen miles an hour, they would overtake these bands of Indians, which the cavalry cannot do. They might be made to transport small pieces of ordnance with great facility } and in fact do all that they are capable of doing in the east, where they are ao-

customed to eat the hardiest shrubs, and to drink the same kind of braokiah water which is stated to exist in some portions of our western deserts.

The bill was lost—lo yeas and 24, nays. The appropriation of 30,000 to buy camels with was a reckless extravagance that the senators could not sanction. An Imaginary Dromedary Express. The the newspapers of California took up the scheme, and the more they agitated it, the mightier it became. They demonstrated that it was possible to form a lightning dromedary express, to carry the fast mail and to bring eastern papers and letters to California in fifteen days. It would be possible, too, if congress could only be induced to import camels and dromedaries, to have fast camel passenger trains from Missouri river points to the Pacific coast. The camel, loading up his internal wafrr tank out of the Missouri and striking straight across the country regardless of watering places and boarding himself on sage brush the plains across, would take his next drink of the trip out of the Colorado river j then after a quiet passage across the desert he would land his passengers in the California coast towns in two weeks from the time of starting. Landing of thi Camels. In December, 1854, Major C. Wayne was sent to Egypt and Arabia to buy seventy-five camels. He bought the first lot in Cairo, and taking these in the naval store ship, Supply, he sailed to Smyrna, where thirtj more of another kind were bought. They cost from seventy-five to three hundred dollars each, somewhtt more than had been paid for the Egyptian lot. The ship Supply, with its load of camels, reached Indianola, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, February 10,1857. Three had died during the voyage, leaving seventy-two ia the herd. About half of these were taken to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where an expedition was fitted out under command of Lieut Beale, for Port Tejon, California. The route lay along the thirty-fifth parallel, crossing the Mojave desert. The expedition consisted of forty-four citizens, with an escort of twenty soldiers, the camels carrying the baggage and water. Were Not Popular, The promctors of the scheme to utilise the camel in America, made one fatal mistake. They figured only on his virtues; his vices were not reckoned into account. Another mistake they made was in not importing Arab drivers with the camels. Prom the very first meeting of the camel and the American mule whacker who waß to be his driver, there developed between the two a mutual antipathy. The army mules shared the antipathy of •the drivers for the Arabian desert trotters. All of his -little eccentricities did not endear the camel to the soldiers of Uncle Sam's army. He was hated, despised, and often persecuted. The teamsters when transformed into camel drivers deserted, and the troopers when detailed for such a purpose fell back upon their reserved rights and declared there was nothing in army rules and regulations that could compel American soldiers to become Arabian oamel drivers. So because there was no one to load and navigate these ships of the desert their voyages became less and less frequent, until finally they ceased altogether; and the desert ships were anchored at the different forts in the southwest. No attempt was ever made to utilise the camel for the purpose that Daviß imported him. Instead of the camel hunting tho Indian, the Indian hunted the camel. Some were allowed to die of neglect by their drivers; others were surreptitiously shot by the troopers sent to hunt them up when they strayed away, Are Now Running Wild.. ' At the breaking out of the civil war some thirty-five or forty of the camel band were herded at the United States forts—Verde, El Paso, Yuma, and some of the smaller posts in Texas. When the eastern forts were abandoned by the government, the camels were turned loose to take care of themselves. Those at Yuma and Port Tejon were taken to Benica, condemned and sold at auction to the highest bidder. They were bought by two Frenchmen who took them to Roose River, Nevada, where they were used in' packing salt to Virginia City. Afterwards they were taken to Arizona and for some time they were used in packing ore from the Silver King mine, down the Gila to Yuma. BufceVenthe Frenchmen's patience gave out at last. Disgusted with their hunch-backed burden bearers, they turned the whole herd loose on the desert near Maricopa Wells.