All Oman, but especially the region just described, is called among the Arabs Um-el-ibl, “mother of the camel.” Palgrave, Doughty and other Arabian travellers agree that the Oman dromedary is the prince of all camel-breeds, and Doughty says they are so highly esteemed at Mecca as to fetch three times the price of other camels.

Unless one knows something about the camel one can neither understand the Arab nor his language; without the camel, life in a large part of Arabia would at present be impossible; without the camel the Arabic language would be vastly different. According to Hammer Purgstall, the Arabic dictionaries give this animal 5,744 different names; there is not a page in the lexicon but has some reference to the camel.

The Arabs highly value the camel, but do not admire its form and shape. There is an Arab tradition, cited in Burton’s “Gold Mines of Midian,” to the effect that when Allah determined to create the horse, He called the South Wind and said, “I desire to draw from thee a new being, condense thyself by parting with thy fluidity.” The Creator then took a handful of this element, blew upon it the breath of life, and the noble quadruped appeared. But the horse complained against his Maker. His neck was too short to reach the distant grass blades on the march; his back had no hump to steady a saddle; his hoofs were sharp and sank deep into the sand; and he added many similar grievances. Whereupon Allah created the camel to prove the foolishness of his complaint. The horse shuddered at the sight of what he wanted to become, and this is the reason every horse starts when meeting its caricature for the first time. The camel may not be beautiful, (although the Arabic lexicon shows that the words for “pretty” and “camel” are related) but he is surpassingly useful.

This animal is found in Persia, Asia Minor, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Mongolia, Western China, Northern India, Syria, Turkey, North Africa and parts of Spain, but nowhere so generally or so finely developed as in Arabia. The two main species, not to speak of varieties, are the Southern, Arabian one-humped camel and the Northern, Bactrian two-humped camel. Each is specially adapted to its locality. The Bactrian camel is long-haired, tolerant of the intense cold of the steppes and is said to eat snow when thirsty. The Arabian species is short-haired, intolerant of cold, but able to endure thirst and extreme heat. It is incredible to Arabs that any camel-kind should have a double hump. A camel differs from a dromedary in nothing save blood and breed. The camel is a pack-horse; the dromedary a race-horse. The camel is thick-built, heavy-footed, ungainly, jolting; the dromedary has finer hair, lighter step, is easy of pace and more enduring of thirst. A caravan of camels is a freight-train; a company of Oman thelul-riders is a limited express. The ordinary caravan travels six hours a day and three miles an hour, but a good dromedary can run seventy miles a day on the stretch. A tradesman from Aneyza told Doughty that he had ridden from El Kasim to Taif and back, a distance of over 700 miles, in fifteen days! Mehsan Allayda once mounted his dromedary after the Friday midday prayer at El-Aly and prayed the next Friday in the great Mosque at Damascus about 440 miles distant. The Haj-road post-rider at Ma’an can deliver a message at Damascus, it is said, at the end of three days; the distance is over 200 miles.

The Arabs have a saying that “the camel is the greatest of all blessings given by Allah to mankind.” One is not surprised that the meditative youth of Mecca who led the camels of Khadiyah, to Syria and back by the desert way, should appeal to the unbelievers in Allah and His prophet in the words, “And do ye not look then at the camel how she is created?” (Surah lxxxviii. 17 of the Koran.)

To describe the camel is to describe God’s goodness to the desert-dwellers. Everything about the animal shows evident design. His long neck, gives wide range of vision in desert marches and enables him to reach far to the meagre desert shrubs on either side of his pathway. The cartilaginous texture of his mouth, enables him to eat hard and thorny plants—the pasture of the desert. His ears are very small, and his nostrils large for breathing, but are specially capable of closure by valve-like folds against the fearful Simoon. His eyes are prominent, but protected by a heavy overhanging upper-lid, limiting vision upward thus guarding from the direct rays of the noon sun. His cushioned feet are peculiarly adapted for ease of the rider and the animal alike. Five horny pads are given him to rest on when kneeling to receive a burden or for repose on the hot sand. His hump is not a fictional but a real and acknowledged reserve store of nutriment as well as nature’s packsaddle for the commerce of ages. His water reservoirs in connection with the stomach, enable him when in good condition to travel for five days without water. Again, the camel alone of all ruminants has incisor-teeth in the upper jaw, which, with the peculiar structure of his other teeth, make his bite, the animal’s first and main defence, most formidable. The skeleton of the camel is full of proofs of design. Notice, for example, the arched backbone constructed in such a way as to sustain the greatest weight in proportion to the span of the supports; a strong camel can bear 1,000 pounds’ weight, although the usual load in Oman is not more than 600 pounds.

The camel is a domestic animal in the full sense of the word, for the Arabian domicile is indebted to the camel for nearly all it holds. All that can be obtained from the animal is of value. Fuel, milk, excellent hair for tents, ropes, shawls and coarser fabrics are obtained from the living animal; and flesh-food, leather, bones and other useful substances from the dead. Even the footprints of the camel though soon obliterated, are of special value in the desert. A lighter or smaller foot would leave no tracks, but the camel’s foot leaves data for the Bedouin science of Athar—the art of navigation for the ship of the desert. Camel tracks are gossip and science, history and philosophy to the Arab caravan. A camel-march is the standard measure of distance in all Arabia; and the price of a milch-camel the standard of value in the interior. When they have little or no water the miserable nomads rinse their hands in camel’s water and the nomad women wash their babes in it. Camel’s-milk is the staple diet of thousands in Arabia even though it be bitter because of wormwood pasturage.

As to the character of the camel and its good or evil nature authorities differ. Lady Ann Blunt considers the camel the most abused and yet the most patient animal in existence. Palgrave, on the other hand, thus describes the stupidity and ugly temper of the beast: “I have, while in England, heard and read more than once of the docile camel. If docile means stupid, well and good; in such a case the camel is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a beast can, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half fellow-feeling with its master, like the horse and elephant, then I say that the camel is by no means docile, very much the contrary. He will never attempt to throw you off his back, such a trick being far beyond his limited comprehension; but if you fall off, he will never dream of stopping for you; and if turned loose it is a thousand to one he will never find his way back to his accustomed home or pasture. One only symptom will he give that he is aware of his rider, and that is when the latter is about to mount him, for on such an occasion, instead of addressing him in the style of Balaam’s more intelligent beast, ‘Am not I thy camel upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day?’ he will bend back his long snaky neck toward his master, open his enormous jaws to bite, if he dared, and roar out a tremendous sort of groan, as if to complain of some entirely new and unparalleled injustice about to be done him. In a word he is from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal rendered serviceable by stupidity alone. Neither attachment nor even habit can impress him; never tame, though not wide-awake enough to be exactly wild.” We can bear witness that the camels we have ridden in Hassa and Yemen were altogether more kindly than the ugly creature of Palgrave.

The chief authorities on the interior of Oman were, until recent date, Niebuhr, Wellsted (1835), Whitelock (1838), Eloy (1843) and Palgrave, (1863). Palgrave, however, only visited the coast and his account of the interior and its history is pure romance. Later travellers have visited the chief cities of Jebel Achdar and corroborated the accuracy of Lieutenant Wellsted in his “Travels in Arabia.” Unfortunately Wellsted’s acquaintance even with colloquial Arabic was very limited and he frankly avows that he encountered serious difficulties in understanding the people. “Wellsted’s map,” says Badger, “is the only one of the province which we possess drawn up from personal observation and ... it affords little or no certain indication of the numerous towns and villages beyond the restricted routes of the travellers. It is remarkable and by no means creditable to the British Government in India, that, notwithstanding our intimate political and commercial relations with Oman, for the last century, we know actually less of that country beyond the coast than we do of the Lake districts of Africa.”[31] Badger wrote in 1860, but although Colonel Miles and others have visited the region of Jebel Achdar, all the country beyond is still largely terra incognita. No one has ever made the journey beyond the range of mountains or solved the mystery of Western Oman, which is still a blank on the best maps; nor do we know anything of the land 100 miles southwest of Muscat, save by Arab hearsay.

The highlands of Oman may be divided into three districts; Ja’alan from Jebel Saffan to Jebel Fatlah on the east. Oman proper on the Jebel Achdar, and Ez-Zahirah on the eastern slopes of Jebel Okdat. The most populous and fertile district is that of Jebel Achdar which is also the best known. The fertility of the whole region is wonderful and in striking contrast with the barren rocks of so large a part of the coast. With a semi-tropical climate, an elevation of 3,000 to 5,000 feet and abundant springs the wadys and oases of Oman have awakened the delight and amazement of every traveller who has ventured to explore them. Water, the one priceless treasure in all Arabia, here issues in perennial streams from many rocky clefts and is most carefully husbanded by the ingenuity of the people, for wide irrigation, by means of canals or watercourses called faluj. Wellsted thus describes these underground aqueducts: “They are as far as I know peculiar to this country, and are made at an expense of labor and skill more Chinese than Arabian. The greater part of the surface of the land being destitute of running streams on the surface, the Arabs have sought in elevated places for springs or fountains beneath it. A channel from this fountain-head is then, with a very slight descent, bored in the direction in which it is to be conveyed, leaving apertures at regular distances to afford light and air to those who are occasionally sent to keep it clean. In this way the water is frequently conducted for a distance of six or eight miles, and an unlimited supply is thus obtained. These channels are about four feet broad and two feet deep and contain a clear, rapid stream. Most of the large towns or oases have four or five of these rivulets or falj (plural faluj) running into them. The isolated spots to which water is thus conveyed, possess a soil so fertile that nearly every grain, fruit or vegetable, common to India, Arab or Persia, is produced almost spontaneously; and the tales of the oases will be no longer regarded as an exaggeration, since a single step conveys the traveller from the glare and sand of the desert into a fertile tract, watered by a hundred rills, teeming with the most luxurious vegetation.”

The chief caravan routes inland start from the coast, at Sohar through Wady-el-Jazy, at Suaik through Wady Thala, at Barka or Sib through Wady Mithaal and Wady Zailah (alternative routes) at Matra, by the same, and at Sur through Wady Falj. On the eastern side of the mountain range the chief towns are Rastak, Nakhl and Someil. On the farther side we have Tenoof, Behilah and Nezwa, all large towns well-watered. “Between these fertile oases one travels[32] sometimes an entire day through stony wady, or over volcanic rock, climbing a difficult mountain pass, or crossing a wide sea-like desert, without seeing a habitation or meeting a fellow-creature except an occasional caravan. Their rifles are swung over the shoulders of the riders, and their wild song keeps time with the slow tread of the camels....

“From Nakhl it is a long day’s journey to Lihiga at the foot of Jebel Achdar. Two other beautifully situated mountain villages, Owkan and Koia are in close proximity. Here, as well as on the mountains, dwells a tribe of hardy mountaineers, the Bni Ryam. In features and habits this tribe is quite distinct from the other Oman tribes. All over these mountains the people lead a peaceful life, and the absence of fire-arms was noticeable in comparison with the valley tribes, where each man carries his rifle, often of the best English or German pattern.

“From Lihiga we began the ascent, and after a half-a-day of most difficult climbing, reached the top of the pass at noonday, my barometer registering 7,050 feet. Here on a level projecting rock, which afforded a splendid extended view of the Wady Mestel, where dwell the Bni Ruweihah, we had our lunch, and were glad to slake our thirst out of the goatskin the guide carried on his shoulder. From the top of the pass we descended to the level table-land at a height of 6,200 feet, and at sunset reached the ideally beautiful village of Sheraegah. It is in a circular ravine several hundred feet in depth, and like a huge amphitheatre where grow in terraces, apples, peaches, pomegranates, grapes and other temperate products in rich profusion. Ice and snow are frequently seen here during the winter, and in summer the temperature registers no higher than 80°F. In March we had a temperature of 40°, and enjoyed a huge fire in the guest-room where a hundred Arabs came to visit us, and entertained us with the recitation of Arabic poetry. Such an opportunity was not to be neglected, and they, as an agricultural people, were interested in the parable of the Sower and the explanation....

“We pressed on over the most difficult mountain roads to Tenoof, at the foot of the mountains on the further side. Nizwa, the old capital of Oman, is but three hours’ journey from Tenoof. It has a large circular fort about 200 feet in diameter, built of rough hewn stone and cement. We intended to return to Muscat along the valley road via Someil, but the state of affairs at Nezwa made roads through hostile territory unsafe, and we decided to recross the mountains, enjoying again their cool climate and the friendliness of the people. By riding long camel-stages and taking short rests, we were able to reach Muscat from the top of the mountains in four days, having been absent on the journey twenty-one days.”