Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/65

 placed upon them, though they will not skip off like a prancing steed, they will rise up and carry it all day long. In this they are like some Christians, who are always grumbling, but who, when it comes to the pinch, rise up under their loads, and bear them manfully; while others, who are smooth and plausible and full of promises, manage to evade every irksome duty. But as to riding this beast of burden, one might well hesitate. The first glance is not assuring. When you take your stand beside the huge creature, whose hump towers quite above your head, and think of climbing such a height, it seems like climbing a haystack. But you do not have to climb up to him: he kneels down to you. The only trouble is in mounting. Here there are three separate motions, which may be deseribed as a kind of "double back-action," or a double forward-action. The camel is lying on the ground, his long legs all under him, and they have to be taken out by instalments. The rider mounts, and the beast begins to rise. First he rises to his foreknees. This tips the rider back to an angle of forty-five degrees. Then his long hindlegs begin to move under him, and as he rises, not to the knees, but to the full height, the rider has a violent pitch forward. Then the forelegs are set in motion again, by which the camel rises from his knees to his proper level, and the rider is in the saddle.