SPAIN’S WILD CAMELS GET NOTICE TO QUIT

Hokitika Guardian, 16 March 1928, Page 4

SPAIN’S WILD CAMELS GET NOTICE TO QUIT

(By a Traveller). There have bt-c-n exciting days of late in the swamps near the mouth of the Guadalquiver, down in Spain, for the wild camels have had a notice to quit—and they won’t budge. That wild camels exist in Spain will come as a surprise to most people. It is just 98 years ago since the .Marquis de VillafVaiiea imported a herd from Africa, for pulling carts and ploughs on his estate. They did not prove very satisfactory and led to labour trouble, as horses often bolted from fear when they met the strangelooking newcomers. .Some were allowed to escape, and these were joined subsequently -by deserters from a herd which were being used on farms in the Huelva region. In the marisma, or swampy marshes, which skirt the lower Guadalquiver, the animals found a freedom in which they thrived and multiplied, despite the occasional forays of poachers who stalk and snipe them and then sell the flesh as venison ! A company has now bought a considerable area of these Spanish camels’ desolate swamps, to turn into a cotton plantation. If there is anything, however, that is worse for growing cotton than roving elephants it is roving c-aniels. So the camels have had notice to quit. They are paying no more attention to it than did the Cheshire Cat in “Alice in AVonderland” to the Queen’s irascible injunction to the executioners to cut off his head. Public opinion in high quarters is strongly opposed to their extermination, which could easily be accomplished by a low-flying aeroplane carrying a machine-gunner and bis deadly tool. Instead, “round-up’' are being carefully planned and achieved, with the object of catching the animals alive and moving them to new homes where they will not be able to do harm. Two of the busiest men in Spain just now are tbe pair of Arab camel grooms from Morocco, whom the army authorities have brought over to teach • the marisma captures nice manners, aiid to explain to the Spanish keepers who have been entrusted with their subsequent care the ten tlion- j • sand and one most important of the little* things about camels that camelkeeper ought to know. . ,