To describe the camel is to describe God’s goodness to the desert-dwellers. Everything about the animal shows evident design. His long neck, gives wide range of vision in desert marches and enables him to reach far to the meagre desert shrubs on either side of his pathway. The cartilaginous texture of his mouth, enables him to eat hard and thorny plants—the pasture of the desert. His ears are very small, and his nostrils large for breathing, but are specially capable of closure by valve-like folds against the fearful Simoon. His eyes are prominent, but protected by a heavy overhanging upper-lid, limiting vision upward thus guarding from the direct rays of the noon sun. His cushioned feet are peculiarly adapted for ease of the rider and the animal alike. Five horny pads are given him to rest on when kneeling to receive a burden or for repose on the hot sand. His hump is not a fictional but a _real_ and acknowledged reserve store of nutriment as well as nature’s packsaddle for the commerce of ages. His water reservoirs in connection with the stomach, enable him when in good condition to travel for five days without water. Again, the camel alone of all ruminants has incisor-teeth in the upper jaw, which, with the peculiar structure of his other teeth, make his bite, the animal’s first and main defence, most formidable. The skeleton of the camel is full of proofs of design. Notice, for example, the arched backbone constructed in such a way as to sustain the greatest weight in proportion to the span of the supports; a strong camel can bear 1,000 pounds’ weight, although the usual load in Oman is not more than 600 pounds. The camel is a _domestic_ animal in the full sense of the word, for the Arabian domicile is indebted to the camel for nearly all it holds. All that can be obtained from the animal is of value. Fuel, milk, excellent hair for tents, ropes, shawls and coarser fabrics are obtained from the living animal; and flesh-food, leather, bones and other useful substances from the dead. Even the footprints of the camel though soon obliterated, are of special value in the desert. A lighter or smaller foot would leave no tracks, but the camel’s foot leaves data for the Bedouin science of _Athar_—the art of navigation for the ship of the desert. Camel tracks are gossip and science, history and philosophy to the Arab caravan. A camel-march is the standard measure of distance in all Arabia; and the price of a milch-camel the standard of value in the interior. When they have little or no water the miserable nomads rinse their hands in camel’s water and the nomad women wash their babes in it. Camel’s-milk is the staple diet of thousands in Arabia even though it be bitter because of wormwood pasturage.