Our Conversation Was Suddenly Terminated By One Of My Men Running In To
The Tent With The Bad News That One Of The Camels Had Dropped Down And
Was Dying.
The report was too true.
He was poisoned by a well-known
plant that he had been caught in the act of eating. In a few hours he
died. There is no more stupid animal than the camel. Nature has
implanted in most animals an instinctive knowledge of the plants
suitable for food, and they generally avoid those that are poisonous:
but the camel will eat indiscriminately anything that is green; and if
in a country where the plant exists that is well known by the Arabs as
the "camel poison," watchers must always accompany the animals while
grazing. The most fatal plant is a creeper, very succulent, and so
beautifully green that its dense foliage is most attractive to the
stupid victim. The stomach of the camel is very subject to inflammation,
which is rapidly fatal. I have frequently seen them, after several days
of sharp desert marching, arrive in good pasture, and die, within a few
hours, of inflammation caused by repletion. It is extraordinary how they
can exist upon the driest and apparently most innutritious food. When
other animals are starving, the camel manages to pick up a subsistence,
eating the ends of barren, leafless twigs, the dried sticks of certain
shrubs, and the tough dry paper-like substance of the dome palm, about
as succulent a breakfast as would be a green umbrella and a Times
newspaper.
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