been found at widely separated points in Europe and America. Today the Family
Camelidae is represented on earth by five species: the llamas, alpacas and vicunas of
South America, and two distinct species of camels in the Old World.

The most outstanding difference between the two species of modern camels is in
the number of humps, the Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius) having one hump,
and the Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus), two. The Arabian species exists today
in the domesticated state only, and has been bred along several diverse lines for
specialized usage. The term “Dromedary” usually signifies a light, swift riding camel
of the Arabian species. The Bactrian camel, which takes its name from an ancient
Iranian kingdom, is hairier, darker in colour and more ponderous in size than its
relative. It is known to exist in the wild state in certain desert areas of Central Asia.
Both species possess the features which make the camel the classic example of adapta-
tion to the desert, and both share in an ancient and honourable record of service to
mankind. As the “ship of the desert’, the camel has contributed in no small measure
to man’s social and cultural expansion.

About the middle of the last century several patriotic and progressive Americans,
among whom was the Honourable Jefferson Davis, then a resident of Mississippi,
decided that camels might be the logical answer to certain tactical problems of com-
munication and supply that the American army was facing on the southwestern
frontier. Accordingly, the Army Appropriation Bill, which became law in March
of 1855, included an appropriation of 30,000 dollars for the purchase of fifty camels,
the hire of ten Arabs, and incidentals.

Two shipments of Arabian camels totalling seventy-six or seventy-seven animals,
were obtained in North Africa and the Near East by Major Wayne of the American
Army. The first shipment was landed at Powder Point, Texas, in May of 1855, and
with the camels came three Arabian and two Turkish camel drivers. The second
shipment arrived in Texas the following year.

Camp Verde, a military post near San Antonio, Texas, became the permanent
camel post of the American Army, and until 1861 the camels were used constantly
on exploring expeditions in New Mexico, Nevada and California. Army officers
who had experience with the camels during this period were generally very enthusiastic
about the experiment and rated them as superior to both horses and mules fer army
transportation purposes in the Southwest. General E. F. Beale, in charge of the
camels, wrote that he had travelled 4000 miles without accident in the Mojave Desert,
and that he had seen a camel rise and walk off with a burden of 1256 pounds. News-
papers in California and Nevada meanwhile enthusiastically predicted the inauguration
of a lightning “Dromedary Express” overland from the East. For a time it appeared
that the inspiration and persuasiveness of Mr. Davis and his allies in the scheme were
to be rewarded with unqualified success.

The American Civil War, breaking out in 1861, proved subsequently disastrous
for both Mr. Davis and the camels. The former was elected to the presidency of the
Confederate States of America in the following year, and while the “boys in blue”
were marching to the strains of “We'll Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree”,
old-style western “mule skinners” and “bull whackers”, under whose tender mercies
the camels had fallen, were turning the air blue over the entire Southwest. The
officers in charge of the camels had been posted to other duties with the outbreak of
the war, the three Arabians had long since returned to their land, and the two Turkish
drivers had left government service.

The camel, even in his most docile moments, is a notorious individualist; and great
patience, perhaps even a degree of fatalistic resignation, is requisite in his human
handler if the relationship is to be at all harmonious. The camels’ new masters were:
unnoted for either meritorious patience or mild temperament; certainly they had no
intention of catering with fatalistic resignation to the whims and vagaries of their
four-footed charges. The drivers kicked and swore, and the camels kicked and bit,
and the total effect must have been like the meeting of an irresistible force and an
immovable object. As a result of this incompatibility, the use of the camels became
increasingly sporadic and desultory, and in the end most of them were abandoned to
wander at will in certain districts in the Southwest. These “wild” camels were
occasionally rounded up and used by enterprising persons, but in every recorded
case the camels outlasted human patience and were re-liberated. The last “wild”
camel reported was seen in Arizona less than forty years ago, but they are now
believed extinct in the United States.

In 1860, while the American Army was still enjoying a measure of success with

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