246 LI STRAND 3AGAZINE.

looking about for something clse to crown the structure. There are all his tents, blankets, trunks, bags, rugs, hat-boxcs, umbrellas, and walking-sticks, with some grocery for Mrs. B. and 1 wooden horse from the Dagdad Arcade for the little B's. It scems pity, having a camel, . not to load it up cnough, so he looks for something else, but can sce nothing. Suddenly it strikes him that he has just used a4 straw to drink a gin=sling, and without for an instant considering what may be the result, he pops it on the top of the rest of the bageage. The patient, loving creature has barely time to give its master one pathetically reproachful look when its back goes with / a bang. Now, this may be the way of the Bedouin, but it 1sn’t the way of ’4)\\\}511‘& the camel. He doesn't wait for the last straw —he won'’t have the b /ey sl he can help it There’s no hiving X o thing m the universce that he wouldn't .hkc | to bite or kick: and when he asn’t 7 Gadies i NI engaged in active warfare with creation

4.

) ' in general, he is sulking and planning

1 genceral, 1 Is sulkimyg and p anningyg

N A o4

by 18, L Hrd

i e cqually resents being loaded or fed, or banged with a pole. He wants the world for himsell, and sdbei5mN inding he can’t get 1ty sulks 7Y | savagely, He has to be shoved forcibly to his knees and ticd down by the neck and fore-legs before he s lToaded, and while the operation is in progress he grunts and growls hke a whole menagerie, and reaches about he can reach to masticate people. When he is loaded he won't get up but he will grunt and / bitc.

5 When at last he is persuaded to stand upon his legs he devotes himself to rushing about and scattering his load far and wide and biting. The unhappy Bedouin’s houschold furniture, hat-boxes, and wooden horse are seattered all over the Syrian Desert, and the unhappy Bedouin himself is worse off than at the beginning ; and still - the msatiate creature bites. The Bedouin swears in his own way hopes that jackals may sit upon the grave of the camel’s grandfather, and so forth and gathers his belongings together preparatory to heginning afresh.

And then, after all this—and supposing that all troubles are overcome B - and the journey ends without mishap -that delightful camel objects to the e bageage being taken off, and growls and P

bites. Tt is not mere pocetic IMagery, 10 caersr paTERSON

is a wicked joke to call the camel the oy e prserr

ship of the desert. To eall it even the Carter

Paterson of the desert would be to cast reflee-

tions upon the business conscientiousness of

a very respectable fum. One s disposed to be the harder on the camel because of the coody-bhook fraud, which is a double-barrelled

(raud, telling wonderful stories of - the camel's speed. As a matter of fact, the ordinary pack-camel, lightlv loaded, 1s barely

._ up to three miles an hour.

X =) Heis a provident beast in the matter of drink. e takes a very long drink when he can get it and saves ity neatly stowed

away, against the drought. As a camel gets

~older and more experienced, he lays by more

“and more water in this way, arriving in the course