When in the marisma in 1892 I met one day a troop of forty animals--some old males, their huge bodies covered with thick hair like blankets; there were also females followed by their young--fantastic of appearance, owing to the disproportionate length of their legs, but galloping and frisking around their mothers as they had done since birth.
Next day my companion and I took lassoes; we encountered a huge old male, singly, which trotted and galloped round our horses, terrifying the poor beasts to such an extent that we could not come near the camel. At length after a fifty-minutes' chase, in crossing a part where the mud was soft and the surface much broken up by cattle coming to drink, we overtook him. Thanks to my horse having less fear than the other, I was presently able to throw a lasso around the camel, my companion hauling taut the rope to hold the prisoner fast. The great brute proved very active, defending himself with his immense flat feet, which he used as clubs, and, moreover, he bit, and the bite of a camel is venomous. Ultimately I succeeded in getting a second rope around him and dragging him to the ground, where he lay like the domestic camel. The photographs illustrate this episode.
Old males frequently have the hair very ragged and scant, especially on hind-quarters, and on their knees are great callosities. The truly wild camels of the marisma are fast disappearing. A friend has furnished me with the approximate number now remaining absolutely wild, viz. fifteen or sixteen near La Macha fronting the Palace of Tisana, besides five enclosed in the Cerrado de Matas Gordas, near the Palacio del Rey, and belonging to Madame La Condesa de Paris.
It was owing to the rapid decrease in their numbers, and in order to save them from extinction, that the Condesa had these enclosures, known as Matas Gordas, prepared. They contain excellent pasturage, besides some extent of brushwood; yet the enclosed camels do not flourish, nor have they ever bred. Big as the enclosures are, yet the area may be too restricted for them; or it may be the disturbance due to the presence of cattle and herdsmen (since the cerrados are let for grazing) that explains this failure; or possibly the camels resent being enclosed at all. At any rate the spectacle of troops of camels rushing wildly forward in all directions is passing away all too quickly, and soon nothing but the legend will remain.