When Nature fashioned the camel she must have had the peculiar requirements of the Arab in mind, for without the ungainly beast life in the desert would be impossible. It frequently attains an age of fifty years; it is capable of carrying a burden weighing up to half a ton, though six hundred pounds is usually the maximum; because of the structure of its stomach it can, as every one knows, go without water for several days on end; it finds ample pasturage in regions where a horse would die from starvation; and the fleet _méhari_, or racing-camels, such as are used by the Touareg, can, when pushed, cover incredible distances without resting. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, were it not for the camel, vast tracts on the maps of Africa and Asia would still be labeled “unexplored.” The term “camel,” strictly speaking, should be used to designate only the single-humped dromedary of Africa, Arabia, and India, though it is also frequently applied to the two-humped Bactrian species found in Central Asia. Though motion-picture producers frequently use animals of both species in the same scenes, this is an amusing solecism, for their habitats are as widely separated as those of the bison and the buffalo. Of the Arabian camel there are almost as many breeds as there are of the horse; the clumsy, lumbering, moth-eaten beasts of burden made familiar to stay-at-home Americans by the circus have about the same relation to the slim, graceful, cream-colored _méhari_ as a draft-horse has to a thoroughbred. On desert journeys camels are expected to carry their loads about twenty-five miles a day for three days without drinking, being watered, however, on the fourth; but an animal of the fleeter breeds will carry its rider fifty miles a day for five days without water; while a Bedouin whom I once employed to carry an urgent message for me in Arabia covered 120 miles of desert in about eighteen hours.