The Arabian C. carries twice the load of a mule. The Bactrian C. is sometimes loaded with 1000 or even 1500 lbs. weight, although not generally with so much. The East India company had at one time a corps of camels, each mounted by two men, armed with musketoons. The use of the C. for the conveyance both of travelers and merchan dise has won it the name of the ship of the desert. A caravan sometimes contains 1000, sometimes even 4000 or 5000 camels. The supply of food carried with the caravan for the use of the camels is very scanty: a few beans, dates, carob-pods, or the like, are all that they receive after a long day's march, when there is no herbage on which they may browse. The pace of the loaded C. is steady and uniform, but slow; it proceeds, how ever, from day to day, accomplishing journeys of hundreds of miles at a rate of about 21 m. per hour. Some of the slight dromedaries, however, can carry a rider more than 100 in. in a day. The motion of the C. is peculiar, jolting the rider in a manner extremely disagreeable to those who are unaccustomed to it.; both the feet on the same side being successively raised, so that one side is thrown forward, and then the other.
The C. produces only one young one at a time, or rarely two. It lives 30 or 40
years.
The patience of the C. has been celebrated by some authors; and the cries by which it expresses its sense of injury when a heavy load is placed upon its back have been pathetically described. With all its general submissiveness, however, the C. is resentful of injury, and during the rutting season it becomes particurlaly vicious.
The flesh and the milk of the C. are much valued by the Arabs as articles of food. The dung is used for fuel, and it was from the soot of this dung that the sal-ammoniac, formerly imported from Egypt, was obtained by sublimation, whilst the sources from which that substance is now procured were unknown. The hair is used for the manu facture of cloth, some kinds of which are coarse, and others comparatively soft and fine. C.'s hair is also imported into Europe for the manufacture of the pencils or small brushes used by painters. The C. can now scarcely be said to exist anywhere in a wild state. It has lately been introduced into Australia.
A fossil species of C. (C. Sivalensis), larger than either of existing species, has been discovered in the tertiary deposits of the Sewalik hills, iu Hindustan.