Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/577



of the noise made by it we often passed camel-caravans without disturbing the slumber of a single man connected with them.

There are no labor-unions in the Orient; the eight-hour working-day is unknown; the camel toils for twenty-one hours out of every twenty-four, and so practically do the poor devils who attend them. But in spite of its many hours per diem, the camel-caravan is a slow means of locomotion, and to it is committed the transportation chiefly of imperishable goods. The camel-caravans that ply between Persia-Baghdad and Damascus-Beirut carry chiefly rugs and the like, while the return load consists (or consisted) of illuminating oil. The cases in which the oil-cans are packed are a regular article of merchandise in a country where lumber is practically non-existent, while the tin cans themselves are used as vessels everywhere.

Rapid transit does not exist in the Orient, but perishable articles are borne on the backs of horses and mules—animals more speedy than the camel. Such caravans travel at most ten hours a day, and cover the distance between Beirut and Baghdad in about thirty days. The British mail, however, carried by one lone man on the back of a camel, covers the distance from Damascus to Baghdad in ten days, crossing the Syrian desert in an air-line. The route is absolutely without water practically from the very gates of Damascus until the Euphrates is reached at Saklawiyeh. Commercial caravans, being debarred from this desert route because of the lack of water, are forced to make the detour by way of Palmyra and El-Dei'r. This route, too, passes through what is usually termed a desert. It is, however, merely a waterless region, whose soil would be productive enough if it could be irrigated. Indeed, in antiquity it was densely populated, as the many imposing ruins prove. In the winter and early spring this route may be traversed without car-