Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 | Page 5

came to a halt with a pull from her teats, and, to the astonishment of all,
arrived in Suakim safe and sound after twelve days' marching.
To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should explain
that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel necks
early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell. Sometimes the
sound is not unlike the bray of an ass, occasionally it reaches the
dignity of the roar of a lion with the bleating of a goat thrown in, then

as quickly changes to the solemnity of a church organ. It is altogether
so strange a sound that nothing but a phonograph could convey any
adequate idea of it. It is a thing to be heard. No pen can properly
describe it. After a long march, and when you are preparing to relieve
the brute of his load, he begins to grouse. When he is about to start in
the morning he grouses. If you hit him, he grouses; if you pat his neck
gently, he grouses; if you offer him something to eat, he grouses; and if
you twist his tail, he makes the same extraordinary noise. The camel
evidently has not a large vocabulary, and he is compelled to express all
his various sensations in this simple manner.
The first part of our journey was monotonous enough, miles and miles
of weary sandy plains, with alternate stretches of agabas or stony
deserts, scored with shallow depressions, where torrential rains had
recently soaked into the sand, leaving a glassy, clay-like surface, which
had flaked or cracked into huge fissures under the heat of the fierce sun.
And at every few hundred yards we came to patches of coarse camel
grass, which had evidently cropped up on the coming of the rain, and,
by its present aspect, seemed to feel very sorry that it had been induced
to put in an appearance, for its sustenance was now fast passing into
vapor, and its green young life was rapidly dying out as the sun
scorched the tender shoots to the roots. But camels thrive on this
parched-up grass, and our brutes nibbled at it whenever one slackened
the head-rope.
We traversed the dreary plain, marked every few yards by the bleached
bones of camels fallen by the way; the only living thing met with for
two days being a snake of the cobra type trailing across our path. The
evening of the second day we camped in a long wadi, or shallow valley,
full of mimosa trees, where our camels were hobbled and allowed to
graze. They delighted in nibbling the young branches of these prickly
acacias, which carry thorns at least an inch in length, that serve
excellently well for toothpicks. Yet camels seem to rejoice in browsing
off these trees, and chew up their thorns without blinking. This I can
partly understand, for the camel's usual diet of dry, coarse grass must
become rather insipid, and as we sometimes take "sauce piquante" with
our cold dishes, so he tickles his palate with one inch thorns.

Climbing ridge after ridge of the dunes, we at last saw stretching before
us in the moonlight the valley of Obak, an extensive wadi of mimosa
and sunt trees. Our guides halted on a smooth stretch of sand, and I
wondered why we were not resting by the wells. Near were three native
women squatting round a dark object that looked to me, in the faint
light of the moon, like a tray. I walked up to them, thinking they might
have some grain upon it for sale, but found to my surprise that it was a
hole in the sand, and I realized at once that this must be a well. One of
the women was manipulating a leather bucket at the end of a rope,
which after a considerable time she began hauling up to the surface. It
was about half full of thick, muddy water. Further on along the wadi I
now noticed other groups of natives squatting on the sand doing
sentinel over the primitive wells. I never came across a more slovenly
method of getting water. The mouths of the holes were not banked or
protected; a rain storm or sand drift at any moment might have blocked
them for a considerable period.
Not being able to get water for the camels was a serious matter, as our
animals were not of the strongest, nor had they been recently trained for
a long journey without water. This was the evening of the third day
from Berber, and many of the poor brutes were showing signs of
weakness. We resolved, therefore, to hurry on at once to the next well,
that of Ariab; so we left the inhospitable wadi,