Free The Sahara by Eamonn Gearon Page B

Camel”
     
     
    For anyone who has the same problem as Ogden Nash, the dromedary, which one finds in the Sahara, has one hump, the Bactrian has two, and they are both camels. It is hard to imagine a desert scene without a camel caravan crossing it. Trudging along or watering at some palm-ringed oasis, one easily assumes that the desert and the camel have always been together, but they have not. The camel is a recent introduction to the Sahara, almost modern in the history of the desert.
    A fixture in every nativity scene and featured in innumerable pictures of Bible stories, the camel has come to represent the quintessential beast of the Middle East. Yet it is not an Arabian or African native. The earliest cameloid fossil remains, which date back fifty million years, are found in North America. About two million years ago, one branch of the family crossed the land bridge that lay where the Bering Straits are now before spreading west through Asia and into Arabia. The major differences between the woolly coated, two-humped Bactrian camel and the leaner, single-humped dromedary reflect the species’ adaptation to climatic conditions in which they each now thrive.
    Even today, there are notable differences between camels native to the north of the Sahara and those from the south. For example, native Sudanese animals have less hair than their northern cousins, and will suffer from the relative cold of the northern Sahara winters if taken there too quickly without a period of acclimatisation.
    In The Art of Travel , the Victorian guide that covers everything for the intrepid traveller, the author Francis Galton says that “Camels are only fit for a few countries, and require practised attendants; thorns and rocks lame them, hills sadly impede them, and a wet slippery soil entirely stops them.” Although there may be limitations to the climates and terrains in which camels work best, it would be a great injustice to call them lazy. Further, whoever believes that a camel is a horse designed by committee betrays great ignorance of the genius of the animal. No other creature comes close to camels for their ability to live in the extreme conditions of hot deserts, as anyone who has lived or worked with them can attest. It is a constant source of amazement that a camel can travel in the desert without water for ten days, after which it can drink as much as 100 to 150 litres in a single session.
    One reason for camels’ ability to go for so long without water is the fact that they do not sweat until their temperature gets above 106°F. In addition, they can lose 25 per cent of their body weight through dehydration before there is a serious risk of death through cardiac failure. Most mammals will die after a drop of 15 per cent.
    A camel can carry twice the load of an ox, travel at twice its speed and cover greater distances. This is also achieved without the need for a cart, thereby providing access to places where the terrain is impassable to wheeled vehicles. Camels could, of course, also be made to carry carts across rough country; broken down into their constituent parts and strapped to the animals’ sides, they would be reassembled once on more suitable tracks. This was still being done in the nineteenth century, as Galton reports: “Mr. Richardson and his party took a boat, divided in four quarters, on camel-back across the Sahara, all the way from the Mediterranean to Lake Tchad [sic].”
    The importance of camels to life in the Sahara can perhaps be summed up in the following exchange between Rosita Forbes and one of her guides: “‘What is Allah’s greatest gift to man?’ [the guide asked] me suddenly. I felt this was a test of my faith in Islam, so I promptly replied, ‘The Koran.’ He looked at me scornfully. ‘The camel! If there were no camels here, there would be no dates, no food, nothing!’ He paused and added solemnly, ‘If there were no camels here, there would be no men!”‘
    When Herodotus talks