The New York Times, May 17, 1896, p.9:
SLANDERS ON THE CAMELA Rash Britisher Criticises Peculiarities He Does Not Understand.
A correspondent of the London News, writing from the Soudan, says:
The camel, be it at once said, is and overrated beast. There is a great deal of him, but he is not for his size nearly so strong as the useful unpretentious donkey. Then, too, his anatomy is so strangely conceived. His legs are attached to his great unwieldly carcass with seemingly little consideration for the uses to which (merely viewed as legs) he might be expected to put them. And his neck and tail are so obviously disproportionate to the rest of him, and both so useless, that one cannot avoid the thought that the camel is somehow incomplete, that he was finished off in a hurry, or, owing to some mistake, was never finished off at all.
Even the qualities he possesses tend to strengthen one in this bewildering suspicion. For instance, he can kick himself violently in the--let us say--front of the back with his fore leg. He does it constantly.
Time and again have I devoted long hours (fruitlessly, I must admit,) to an attempt to win the confidence of my favorite camel--my favorite, because the is less cruel to me than the others. I have wooed him with the soft notes of my kourbash, I have tempted him with the thorniest of mimosa branches, I have puffed tobacco smoke into his supercilious nostrils, and then, just as I have fancied I saw the light of sympathy dawning in his long lashed eye he has risen all of one movement to his feet, grinned at me in a frightful manner, disclosing a forest of green and broken teeth, and gazing at me full, with more vindictive contempt than I have ever marked in any human eye, has kicked himself violently in the stomach and lain down again, as one who should say, "Now go away and don't bother, like a good boy."
Then he can gnaw his own tail--his absurd, useless little rag of a tail that isn't even worth biting. But is that an object worth living for?
He has, to be sure, seven stomachs, of which, vain beast, he is so inordinately proud (as though he had anything to do with it) that he is constantly fetching up one of them to show to you, and blows it out from his great ugly throat in a horrid glittering transparent bulb for you to admire. A more nauseating practice could hardly be conceived, but the low brute will do it.
One accomplishment, indeed, I can give him credit for. He can flick a fly from the top of his head with his hind toe. Now, this in the age we live in might, were he a luckier beast and the rest of his bulk conducive, have served him in good stead. But as things are I fear he will make nothing of it. His shape is fatally against him, and he will never become fashionable as a step dancer.
But with all his faults, defects, and disabilities, the camel has, so far as this country is concerned, not yet been superseded by any more practical invention, and, despite the fact that his temper is bad, his appetite vast and sordid, his capacity for prolonged existence without water a giddy fiction, his carrying capabilities mean, and his locomotive powers exasperatingly meagre, yet he is all we have, and on him must we largely depend throughout this Dongala expedition.
Dr. Conan Doyle, who is one of our party, believes, after a week or so of acquaintance with the camel, that he has discovered in his mount great delicacy of sentiment and much dignity of demeanor. But, then, Dr. Conan Doyle is a man of so wide a charity that he actually believes in and even admires--well, no, I will not say who it is. Let every one guess for himself. But if that person, why not the camel? Why not, indeed?
Perhaps I may have some day something pleasant to say about my camels. Time must decide. Is it a long-lived beast, I wonder?
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The ruling regime is a mixture of military elite and an Islamist party that came to power in a 1989 coup. Some northern opposition parties have made common cause with the southern rebels and entered the war as a part of an anti-government alliance. Peace talks gained momentum in 2002-03 with the signing of several accords, including a cease-fire agreement.
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