Part 12 (1/2)
A trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm, We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front, And when we've saved 'is bloomin' life, he chaws our bloomin'
arm.
The 'orse 'e knows above a bit, the bullock's but a fool, The elephant's a gentleman, the baggage mule's a mule; But the commissariat cam-u-el, when all is said and done, 'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan child in one.
O the oont, O the oont, O the Gawd forsaken oont!
The 'umpy lumpy 'ummin'-bird a singin' where 'e lies, 'E's blocked the 'ole division from the rearguard to the front, An' when we gets 'im up again--the beggar goes an' dies!
'E'll gall an' chafe an' lame an' fight--'e smells most awful vile, 'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile; 'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through, And when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two.
O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin' droppin' oont!
When 'is long legs gives from under, an' 'is meltin' eye is dim, The tribes is up be'ind us an' the tribes is out in front, It ain't no jam for Tommy, but it's kites and crows for 'im.
So when the cruel march is done, an' when the roads is blind, An' when we sees the camp in front an' 'ears the shots be'ind, O then we strips 'is saddle off, an' all 'is woes is past: 'E thinks on us that used 'im so, an' gets revenge at last!
O the oont, O the oont, O the floatin' bloatin' oont!
The late lamented camel in the water-cut he lies.
We keeps a mile be'ind 'im an' we keeps a mile in front, But 'e gets into the drinkin' casks, an' then, of course, we dies.
Through the humorous lilt of these lines you may perceive many facts, especially the mortality among camels in our Afghan campaigns. In that of 1878-1879, about 50,000 camels were paid for by the British Government. But this was in no wise the fault of the brutal Briton, for the beasts were deliberately sacrificed by their native owners, who were guaranteed compensation for their loss. It was easier to allow the camel to die than to toil after him over a difficult country. It is now laid down as an axiom of the Transport service that animals required to proceed beyond the bases, and to act with troops in the field, should be the property of the Government, while the transport of supplies within the bases should be mainly hired. But on the next pinch the chances are that the axiom will be disregarded. A history of the military services of the camel would be the history of Eastern wars. He has served and served well both as baggage cart and troop-horse, and whether from stupidity or courage is as stolid and unmoved under attack as were the British infantry squares at Waterloo.
Herodotus, Pliny, Livy, Diodorus, and Xenophon are quoted by Major Burn of the Intelligence Branch in his excellent official manual on Transport and Camel Corps. In modern campaigns camel corps were organised by Napoleon in Egypt, Sir Charles Napier in Sindh, by Carbuccia in Algeria, and during the Indian Mutiny the ”Ninety-twa” Highlanders had a camel corps of 150 native drivers, and 155 well-bred camels on which sat 150 kilted Highlanders. Sir Charles Napier's Sindh camel corps seems to have been the most complete in design and equipment, and in every way worthy of that great soldier's genius. The principle on which it was based is the plainest of all the plain truths ignored by our system--that the transport is the most vital part of military matters, and should be organised with just as much care as a regiment. In an expedition for the capture of a robber chief in Sindh, Sir Charles Napier's camel corps travelled 70 miles during the night, captured the thief, and returned, thus accomplis.h.i.+ng 140 miles in twenty-four hours. Feats of this kind, of course, were not continuous, and their bringing-off was due to the care with which the rest and upkeep of the animals were maintained. This splendid property organised in 1845 was allowed to die down, and no such efficient organisation existed in subsequent campaigns, where money, hastily spilled like water, purchased discomfort and sickness for the troops, and that tardy and confused movement of his ma.s.ses which breaks the heart of an anxious general.
As a rule, the management of camels should be left to Orientals, though the French say their men learned to imitate the Arab camel cries. Our Thomas Atkins is a poor ventriloquist, ill at outland tongues. Like his officers, too, he cherishes the ancient illusion, filtered down from book to book, about the extra water-tank stomach of the camel, and his power of going without water. As a plain physiological fact, the camel has no such chamber, his digestive arrangements are like those of the ox, but simpler, approaching the horse character; and, if he goes without water, it is only because he cannot get it. There are pouches in his stomach, which frequently after death are found to contain fluid; but that they are reservoirs pure and simple is doubtful, says Mr. J. H. Steel in his _Manual of the Camel_. ”It is very certain that the parched traveller who cuts open his dying camel to obtain its water store will thus procure only a very little fluid of a temperature of about 90 Fahr., of a mawkish, sub-acid flavour and an unpleasant odour.” He should be watered twice a day in the hot weather, and once in the cool season. It is true, of course, that he has been known to go dry for seven or eight days, but it was labour and sorrow to him. Also, although he can travel twenty miles a day, carrying 360 lbs. weight, he is capable of fatigue as other beasts are, and once out of condition does not regain his strength in less than six months. And in spite of his unfriendly and unsympathetic disposition, it is a fact that, like the rest of G.o.d's creatures, he is more tractable under kind treatment that when bullied and roughly handled. Of a man we sometimes say ”he has an unfortunate manner,” nor do we always mean it, for such a manner often shows the aggressive selfishness and ill-temper that command fortune and respect. The supercilious expression framed in the camel's lips, which disclose with savage threat the long upper teeth, denied by nature to other ruminants, and his curiously indifferent air, are real misfortunes to him.
We bow respectfully to the camel-tempered man of private life, but it is hard to be civil to a beast whose face is a sculptured sneer.
The long-shanked, cus.h.i.+on-footed creature is especially good at fording rivers where the bottom is sandy. A drove going across will sometimes make a ford practicable for horses, acting like a roller on a loose road, but a few yards of greasy clay will throw many a camel. A fair slope is not much of an obstacle, but a steep hill of slippery wet clay, up which a mule goes gaily, is a sad business for the camel. Nature has made his shoulder, chest, and fore-legs strong, but the attachments of the hind limbs are weak and ill-considered. So the beast is liable to dislocations of the hip in climbing, or, as the British soldier says, ”he splits 'isself up.” Some Afghan short-legged breeds are good climbers, but of most the Arab saying holds good: ”Which is best for you, O camel, to go up hill or down? May G.o.d's curse rest on both wherever met, quoth the camel.” None the less, at this moment long strings are pacing with heavy burdens up and down the hill roads to Kashmir, Simla, and Kabul.
[Ill.u.s.tration: RAJPUT CAMEL GUNS]
Camels, like mules, can be used to carry field-pieces, the equipment of a gun being divided among three animals. The indigenous practice was to make the beast himself a gun-carriage, bearing a Zamburah (wasp), a piece like our old falconet or like the heavy swivel muskets sometimes seen in English armouries, intended for the tops of a s.h.i.+p or the stern sheets of a boat.
The saddle also carries a rider who holds the heavy wooden stock and fires the gun with a slow match. The lingering nature of this arrangement must in action have lent a lively interest to the evolutions of a gun camel, for there is always the chance that just at the critical moment the beast may sling round and point the gun at its friends. Another camel gun is a sort of _mitrailleuse_, carrying twenty-one barrels in a framework of iron-clamped wood. Both these contrivances are still in as much use as the brooding pax Britannica allows in Rajputana, especially at Oodeypore and Jeypore, and make a great figure in State processions when salutes are fired. The Sikhs had a great number of camel guns of the Zamburah type, and at the battle of Sobraon it is said that over 2000 were captured. Some of these still survive in the armoury at Fort Lah.o.r.e.
Besides his services as a slow-pacing pack animal and as a steed capable of covering long distances at a high speed, the camel has many uses unnoticed by Europeans. He is blindfolded in Sindh and made to go a mill-round, grinding flour or oil seeds; working sometimes in such a confined s.p.a.ce, one wonders how they got the huge beast in, or how they will get him out again. He takes the place of the ox at the plough and the well, and acts as water-carrier in parts of Rajputana, on the edges of the Indian desert and in the camel districts of the Punjab. On the Grand Trunk road to Delhi are wonderful double-storied wagons drawn by camels. These old-world contrivances go at the rate of about three miles per hour, and are like nothing so much as the cage wagons of travelling menageries. They are in effect iron cages intended originally as a protection against robbery. The pa.s.sengers are huddled together and seem to sleep most of the time, and, to do him justice, so does the driver. The most picturesque ”property” of the Punjab Government house is a huge _char a banc_, to which is harnessed a team of four or six fine camels with leopard skin housings and gaily attired riders. The camel van will probably be run off the road by the railway, but modified versions of it must for long survive in the desert regions off the line of rail.
It ought to be unnecessary to say that while one camel is like another to an untrained European eye, there are in India, as in Arabia, carefully cla.s.sified breeds, though they are not distinctively branded with caste marks, as is the case in the West. One listens to this lore with respect, but it is not easily remembered, nor is it of much importance, save to the camel owner or the Government officer sent forth at tuck of drum to buy or hire all the good camels he can lay hands on. By common consent the very best of the animals of the plain are considered to be those of Bikanir and Jessulmir, Rajput States on the edge of the great Indian desert, where the hot dry air suits the austere Arab const.i.tution of the beast. But it has a wider range of variety than is generally thought, each suited to its _habitat_, until in the hills the slender, high-caste form becomes square, st.u.r.dy, and thickly covered with a coa.r.s.e, cold-resisting pelage. The two-humped Bactrian camel is prepared by nature to withstand a cold almost as keen and piercing as that the reindeer feels, and yet will breed with the one-humped camel of the burning plain. Signor Lombardini, an authority on cameline anatomy, finds a rudimentary second hump in the ordinary one-humped camel.
After the he-goat, a whole camel seems a large offering for the most pious person to make, but he still occasionally serves as a sacrifice. Colonel Tod wrote that the Great Mogul used to slay a camel with his own hand on the new year festival, and the flesh was eaten by the court favourites. He is certainly eaten, and they say camel in good condition much resembles beef. After his death his bones are valuable, being whiter and more dense than most other bones, and a fair subst.i.tute for ivory. But they are neglected except by the lac-turners of Dera Ismail Khan, who use them for the studs and ornaments with which they adorn their ware. Possibly some camel bones are picked by English turners and b.u.t.ton-makers out of the Indian bones now imported. It may not be generally known that the attention of traders has been recently drawn to the cattle remains that lie near Indian villages. Each hamlet has its Golgotha, where worn-out animals are left to die. Hitherto, only the vulture, the crow, and the jackal have visited these spots, after the leather-dresser has taken the skin of the last comer. But though it never occurred to the Oriental that they could be of any use, Western science, like the giant in the child's tale, grinds bones to make bread. So the village bone-heaps are swept up and s.h.i.+pped to Europe. Perhaps a day may come when the people, awaking to their value, will cry out that they have been robbed. The bone heaps will certainly be missed by the scientific Indian agriculturists of the future, but there is no way of keeping them in the country. Learned authorities on economic questions say it is a mistake to use customs duties with any beneficent intention, just as literary critics say it is bad art to write a story with a purpose, and both have some right on their side. Otherwise, in the interests of India, one would like to impose a heavy export duty on wild bird skins, feathers, and bones, and a crus.h.i.+ng import duty on aniline dyes and Members of Parliament.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LEADING CAMEL OF A KAFILA (AFGHANISTAN)]
Camel trappings are not so gaudy in India as in Egypt or Morocco, where riding animals are bedizened in scarlet and yellow. They are in a different key of colour, belonging to a school of pastoral ornament in soberly-coloured wools, beads, and small white sh.e.l.ls, which appears to begin (or end) in the Balkans and stretches eastward through Central Asia into India, especially among the Biloch and other camel folk on our North-West frontier. Camel housings may be the beginning of the nomad industry of carpet weaving. It is perhaps not too fanciful to trace on the worsted neckband the original unit or starting-point of the carpets and ”saddle-bags” which have given lessons to English upholsterers. There is not much room for variety in a narrow fillet with only black, brown, and dingy white as a colour scheme, but you may watch a long Kafila go curtseying past and find no two neck-bands quite alike in the arrangement of zig-zags, diamonds, bars, and squares. These bands, with more richly coloured rugs and saddle-bags, and the homely russet splendours of worsted cords, ta.s.sels, sh.e.l.ls, and beads, with which the leading camel is adorned, are wrought by women. Like more women's work, it is done at intervals. The English lady complains that her Turkoman or Biloch rug lies unevenly on her parquet floor, and does not reflect that the perverse ”buckling” marks the times when camp was s.h.i.+fted to follow the pasturing flocks, and the loom with its unfinished carpet was rolled up to be staked anew with Oriental carelessness as to straightness. ”Saddle-bags,” said a London tradesman to me, ”have had their day, they've got common.” This sounded sadly, but they will not cease to be for all that.
CHAPTER XI
OF DOGS, FOXES, AND JACKALS
”Hev a dog, Miss!--they're better friends nor any Christian.”
GEORGE ELIOT, _The Mill on the Floss_.