Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/576

530 For all of these reasons the traveller should provide himself with an outfit that will make him wholly independent of village or even of urban hospitality. This involves quite a retinue: horses, pack-mules, muleteers, servants, cooks, tents, cooking utensils, etc. The tents may be pitched in the neighborhood of a village from which to get supplies for man and beast, and being master in his own house, the traveller may write to his heart's content, and need pay no attention whatever to the inquisitive mob of villagers that ever throngs his camp.

What I have said heretofore has to do with the man who travels for science or pleasure. In general it may be said that the selamlik and the mussafir oda are intended solely for his like—that is, for the lonely wayfarer, not for commercial traders, their trains and wares, nor for caravans consisting of many animals and men.

In former ages houses were built at fixed intervals along the great trade-routes for the entertainment and safety of caravans. These caravansaries are now rapidly passing away, and in their absence caravans are forced to encamp in the open. Such a camp is a picturesque and busy scene. Those caravans whose pack-bearing animals are camels stop but for a few hours each day, generally not more than three. The stop is usually made in the daytime: the packs and pack-saddles of the camels are deposited in long parallel rows, while the camels are turned loose to graze; and it is amazing to see how they pass by any tuft of grass or green shrub to feast on the dry, wind-driven thistle, which to a mere human being would seem to contain no nutriment whatever. The camel, even when burdened, can travel almost continuously; however, a stop is made each day, incidentally for food and rest for the animals, but primarily in order to give the caravaneers an opportunity to cleanse the pack-saddles, whose accumulations of sweat and dirt would seriously injure the backs of the animals unless cleansed daily. But there is no rest for the caravaneers when thus encamped: they do not even take food. When the pack-saddles have been cleansed, the caravaneers prepare the animals' daily ration, which is made into a dough, of which each camel receives a lump ridiculously small when contrasted with the size of the animal and the unremitting toil expected of him. The camels are then reloaded—an operation which evokes remonstrance and protest from them all,—and then the caravan once more takes up its creeping march.

Once on the road, the caravaneers, each mounted on a donkey, bring forth from their wallets the unleavened bread and onions that form their own frugal meal. When this function is over they are ready for bed,—or at all events for sleep, which is enjoyed en route and in an extraordinary way: each caravaneer throws himself across the back of a donkey in such a way that his arms and head hang down on one side and his legs on the other side. And thus he sleeps! One naturally imagines that a caravan, often carrying wares worth many thousands of dollars, is conducted by a wide-awake and clear-headed man, and in unsafe regions this is, indeed, the case. But elsewhere it is not the case: the man, whether clear-headed or not, is usually sound asleep, while the caravan is conducted on its plodding way by an astute geographer—a geographer whose topographical and chorographical bumps are abnormally developed,—namely, the donkey. The halter of the first camel is fastened to the pack-saddle of the intellectual donkey; that of the second camel to the pack-saddle of the first, and so on to the end. Meanwhile the caravaneers sleep the sleep of the outworn drudge. One intellect alone is awake—an intellect much maligned by those who know little or nothing of the sterling qualities of the wise and ever-faithful ass. The little fellow takes his time, to be sure, stopping to nibble at every tempting morsel by the wayside. When he stops, the fifty or the hundred camels stop; the other donkeys stop, each bearing its sleeping clod, and all await the pleasure of the four-footed gentleman in the lead. He is never for long a truant to the trust imposed in him, but, the tempting tuft once plucked, he takes up the march again.

My own caravan was itself a somewhat formidable array of men and animals, whose march necessarily created considerable noise, but in spite