One hundred years ago
THE Times of Wednesday gives some very curious facts as to the camel in Australia. The white men have taken over the beast, which is the East incar- nate, and which the East has used for thousands of years without having dreamed of improving him, and have at once produced a greatly superior ani- mal. The Australian breeds his camels, as he does his sheep, on scientific prin- ciples, so that within twenty-five years there has been produced in Australia a race of camels "larger in frame, sounder in wind and limb, and possessed of greater weight-carrying capacity than the Indian animals originally imported." Already there are ten thousand camels at work in Australia, and camel cara- vans are used to take up and stock country which was formerly declared incapable of being utilised because a belt of desert intervened between it and the settled regions. The caravans are also most useful in bringing gold from the diggings. The power of the camels to go without water has been amply proved. Cases are given in which they had "spells of twenty-three and twenty- one days without a drop of water."
The Spectator 13 October 1894
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