THE CAMEL'S HUMP by Grant Allen

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 19, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 32.

THE CAMEL'S HUMP.

By Grant Allen

STRUCTURALLY, of course, the humps are nothing—mere lumps of fat, collected under a convenient fold of the skin, and utterly unprovided for in the frame-work of the skeleton. When the animal is at its best and well fed, they are full and plump, standing up on his back firm and upright; but on a long journey they are gradually absorbed to keep up the fires that work the heart and legs, and in the caravan camels which arrive at the coast the skin hangs over, an empty bag, upon the creature's flanks, bearing witness to the scarcity of external food during the long, forced march from the interior. A starved, small camel in this state of health far more closely resembles a Peruvian llama than anyone who has only seen the fine, well-kept beasts in European menageries or zoological gardens, could readily imagine.

But water is even scantier in the desert than food; and against want of water, therefore, the camel has had to provide himself, functually at least, if not structurally, quite as much as against want of herbage. His stomach has accordingly acquired the power of acting as an internal reservoir, and he can take in as much water at the bahrs or wadys, where he rests for awhile on his toil-some march, as will supply his needs for four or five days together. There are some differences in this respect, however, between the two chief varieties of camel. The African kind is most abstemious and best adapted to sandy deserts; the Bactrian, a product of a more varied and better-watered country, is larger and stronger, but less patient of hunger and thirst, while at the same time it can manage to subsist, and to make its way into a somewhat rockier and more rugged country.

—Grant Allen, in Popular Science Monthly.