An ordinary camel's load is from seven to eight hundred pounds. With this weight on their backs, a train of camels will cross thirty miles of desert during a day. Those used to carry dispatches, having only the light weight of the dispatch-bearer, of course are expected to travel much faster, however, and will easily accomplish two hundred and forty miles in the same length of time.
Ungainly, awkward, repulsive-looking as these creatures are, with their great projecting harelips and their hairy humps, they have the compensation of being most priceless treasures to all those who "dwell in tents" in the vast sandy plains of Egypt, Arabia, and Tartary.
Their stomachs are so formed by nature that they are capable of being converted into a set of water tanks, a number of small cells filled with the purest water being fastened to the sides of each, and when all food fails, it makes little difference to a camel or dromedary--at least for a time.
Their humps are composed of a fatty substance. Day by day the hump diminishes, and the fat is absorbed into the animal's system, furnishing nourishment until food is forth-coming.
Thus, with these stores of water and fuel on board, the "ship" can go on for a fortnight, or even a month, absolutely without eating or drinking, while things that other creatures--unless, perhaps, it be some bird of the ostrich tribe--would never dream of touching, will furnish forth a sumptuous meal for a camel. Off a handful of thorns and briers he can make an excellent breakfast, and I believe he will not disdain anything apparently so untempting as a bit of dry wood.
Provided that at certain periods of the year a short holiday is allowed the camel for pasturing, quite at its leisure, to recruit its strength and fill that store-house on its back with fuel, it will serve its master, on such meagre fare as I have mentioned, for full fifty years. Still, all work and no play is as bad for camels as it is for boys.
Even with plenty of fuel on board, the desert-ship owners are wise enough not to impose too long journeys upon their heavily laden fleets.
A camel's foot is of a peculiar formation. It is wide-spreading, and is provided with fleshy pads or cushions; and if after a certain march rest were not given, the skin would wear off these pads, the flesh become bare, bringing consequences direful indeed. Probably the suffering creature would kneel down, fold its long legs under its body, and stretching out its long neck on the ground, calmly announce in camel language that it would go no further. It is no use whatever to try to make a camel go against his will.