The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-02-08

l ty-one camels on February 10, 1857, and those, too, were sent to the interior From Indianola, Tex, the camels were moved overland at the rate of forty ana fifty miles q day, carrying government stores to the weight of one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds each, to interior
 points in Texas Almost from the hfst
 there was much difficulty in grooming
 and feeding the camels In few
 weeks several died of unknown dlseas-
 es, and the others languished and De-
 came unfit for work The military olll~
 cers found it hard to get any hostier to
 attend to the canels toward when all
 caValrymen and troopers took violent
 dislike. There were frequent reports
 that a camel or two had broken away
 during the night and wandered away
 by itself across the sandy pains, and It
 has been suspected that extraordinary
 zeal was not always put forth to ma
 the animals.
 From May IS, 1857, until early in 1861,
 some thirty of the scamels that had be-
 come domesticated to American ways
 and the climate of the southwest were
 kept at the United States forts at El
 |
 cared for at the expense of the military
 department, but because the troopers
 and teamsters in the service could not
 be urged to use the beasts instead of
 horses or mules, and especially because
 of the clumsiness of the camel harness
 and the unusual labor in packing and preparing a ship of the desert for ser
 vice, the animals were seldom used. In the last year or two of their stay at the garrison, they were merely pension CTS upon Uncle Sam's bounty and were never brought in service
 In 1861 the herd numbered forty-four head. Then the civil war came on, and in the stir and wild excitement of those days in every fort in the south all at tention was turned from the camels to the great crisis in national military affairs The forts fell into disuse and the beasts were allowed to wander away at will They travelled in pairs, and sometimes in punches of fours and sixes, across the deserts and into the Some lived for years in the Panhandle of Texas, and a few made their way as far west as the Colorado river in Southern California In some instances the camels multiplied, but in twenty years most of them died among the mountains or were killed by the h. dians.
 At intervals in the past decade the soldiers at the garrisons in New Mexico and Arizona have seen stray remnants or descendants of the original herd run ming about on the alkali plains and amid the sage brush and cactus. Many 8 passenger on the Southern Pacific railroad trains has had a sight of some gaunt bony and decrept old camel 1 away off in the distance from the rail- road and plodding his way across the | territories. The animals have grown | white with age, are as wild and intrac- l table as any mustang, and have hard, | horny hoofs, unlike the cushiony pedal 1 of the well-kept camel, and l -heir hide has assumed a hard, leathery l appearance.
 It is likely there are very few of these | ships of the desert left in America. | They have not been seen in the central | )art of either New Mexico or Arizona in several years. A number of members | If the international boundary commits 'iOn that recently finished a resurvey of | he boundary line between the United States and Mexico report that they saw Wo camels in Southern Arizona, and he animals appeared to be in their prime, and probably were the descend ,nts of the original herd of camelr. f The Indians of Mexico have seen seve- al of the animals in their country for Jears, and have feasted on few of hem on tribal fete days.-Pittsburg Dispatch.