Mr. Lowell somewhat regained his health, and proceeded to Sioot, the capital of Upper Egypt, to lay in the stores needed for his journey to Nubia. While at Sioot, he saw the great caravan of Darfour in Central Africa, which comes to the Nile once in two years, and is two or three months in crossing the desert. It usually consists of about six hundred merchants, four thousand slaves, and six thousand camels laden with ivory, tamarinds, ostrich-feathers, and provisions for use on the journey.
Mr. Lowell writes in his journal: "The immense number of tall and lank but powerful camels was the first object that attracted our attention in the caravan. The long and painful journey, besides killing perhaps a quarter of the original number, had reduced the remainder to the condition of skeletons, and rendered their natural ugliness still more appalling. Their skins were stretched, like moistened parchment scorched by the fire, over their strong ribs. Their eyes stood out from their shrunken foreheads; and the arched backbone of the animals rose sharp and prominent above their sides, like a butcher's cleaver. The fat that usually accompanies the middle of the backbone, and forms with it the camel's bunch, had entirely disappeared. They had occasion for it, as well as for the reservoir of water with which a bountiful nature has furnished them, to enable them to undergo the laborious journey and the painful fasts of the desert. Their sides were gored with the heavy burdens they had carried.
"The sun was setting. The little slaves of the caravan had just driven in from their dry pasture of thistles, parched grass, and withered herbage these most patient and obedient animals, so essential to travellers in the great deserts, and without which it would be as impossible to cross them as to traverse the ocean without vessels. Their conductors made them kneel down, and gradually poured beans between their lengthened jaws. The camels, not having been used to this food, did not like it; they would have greatly preferred a bit of old, worn-out mat, as we have found to our cost in the desert. The most mournful cries, something between the braying of an ass and the lowing of a cow, assailed our ears in all directions, because these poor creatures were obliged to eat what was not good for them; but they offered no resistance otherwise. When transported to the Nile, it is said that the change of food and water kills most of them in a little time."