If it once refuses, you have but two ways open to you: you may quietly lie down beside it until it is ready to move, or you may abandon it forever. Other course there is none.
It is a curious fact that, notwithstanding the softness of the camel's foot, it can walk over the sharpest stones, or thorns, or roots of trees without the least danger of wounding itself, and that what this strange beast most dreads is wet and marshy ground.
We read that "the instant it places its feet upon anything like mud, it slips and slides, and generally, after staggering about like a drunken man, falls heavily on its side."
The use of the camel to the various peoples of the East is almost incalculable. Many an Arab finds his chief sustenance in the cheese, butter, and milk of the mother camel. The flesh of young camels is also often eaten.
The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is said to have reckoned camel's feet one of the daintiest dainties of his sumptuous banquets, and he considered a portion of tender camel roast a thing to be by no means despised. To this day, indeed, camel's hump cut into slices and dissolved in tea is counted a relish by the Tartar tribes.
Camel's skin is made into straps and sandals, while brushes and ropes, cloth and tents, sacks and carpets, are made entirely from camel's hair.
Every year toward the beginning of summer the camel sheds its hair, every bristle of which vanishes before the new hair begins to grow. For three weeks this bare condition lasts. His camelship looks as if he had been shaved without mercy from the tip of his tail to the top of his head, and during this shaven season he is extremely sensitive to the cold or wet, shaking in every limb if a drop of rain falls, shivering painfully in the chilliness of the night air.
By-and-by the new hair begins to grow--fine, soft, curly wool that gradually becomes long, thick, soft fur; and after this, the rain may rain as much as it likes, the night air may be as chilly as it will, the camel will not care a grain. In that armor of nature's providing he will not shiver or shake any more.
The hair of a camel, on an average, will weigh about ten pounds. It is said to be sometimes finer than silk, and longer than the wool of a sheep. In the course of my reading, a short time ago, I met with an account of a camel market in a town of Tartary especially noted for its trade in that species of live stock.