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essay, his back is so stiff that he can scarcely move without screaming with pain, and that the prospect of mounting the Camel afresh is anything but a pleasant one.
"I tried to sit erect without moving," writes Mr. Kennard, when describing his experience of Camel-riding. "This proved a relief for a few minutes, but, finding the effort too great to continue long in this position, I attempted to recline with my head resting upon my hand. This last manœuvre I found would not do, for the motion of the camel's hind legs was so utterly at variance with the motion of his fore-legs that I was jerked upwards, and forwards, and sideways, and finally ended in nearly rolling off altogether.
"Without going into the details of all that I suffered for the next two or three days--how that on several occasions I slid from the camel's back to the ground, in despair of ever accustoming my half-dislocated joints to the ceaseless jerking and swaying to and fro, and how that I often determined to trudge on foot over the hot desert sand all the way to Jerusalem rather than endure it longer--I shall merely say that the day did at last arrive when I descended from my camel, after many hours' riding, in as happy and comfortable a state of mind as if I had been lolling in the easiest of arm-chairs."
A very similar description of the transition from acute and constant suffering to perfect ease is given by Albert Smith, who states that more than once he has dozed on the back of his Camel, in spite of the swaying backwards and forwards to which his body was subjected.
If such be the discomfort of riding a smooth-going and good-tempered Camel, it may be imagined that to ride a hard-going and cross-grained animal must be a very severe trial to an inexperienced rider. A very amusing account of a ride on such a Camel, and of a fall from its back, is given by Mr. Hamilton in his "Sinai, the Hedjaz, and Soudan:"--
"A dromedary I had obtained at Suk Abu Sin for my own riding did not answer my expectations, or rather the saddle was badly put on--not an easy thing to do well, by the way--and one of my servants, who saw how out of patience I was at the many times I had had to dismount to have it arranged, persuaded me to try the one he was riding, the Sheik's present. I had my large saddle transferred to his beast, and, nothing doubting, mounted it.
"He had not only no nose-string, but was besides a vicious brute, rising with a violent jerk before I was well in the saddle, and anxious to gain the caravan, which was a little way ahead, he set off at his roughest gallop. Carpets, kufieh, tarbush, all went off in the jolting; at every step I was thrown a foot into the air, glad to come down again, bump, bump, on the saddle, by dint of holding on to the front pommel with the left hand, while the right was engaged with the bridle, which in the violence of the exercise it was impossible to change to its proper hand. I had almost reached the caravan, and had no doubt my hump-backed Pegasus would relax his exertions, when a camel-driver, one of the sons of iniquity, seeing me come up at full speed, and evidently quite run away with, took it into his head to come to my assistance.