They are kneeling on the ground, with their long necks swaying and stretching around like boa constrictors.  These camels are very useful animals, but I always like to see them at a distance, especially in the month of February, for at that time they get to be as “mad as a March hare.”  They are what the Arabs call “taish,” and often bite men severely.  In Hums one bit the whole top of a man’s head off, and in Tripoli another bit a man’s hand off.  I once saw a camel “taish” in Beirut, and he was driving the whole town before him.  Wherever he came, with his tongue hanging down and a foaming froth pouring from his mouth as he growled and bellowed through the streets, the people would leave their shops and stools and run in dismay.  It was a frightful sight.  I was riding down town, and on seeing the crowd, and the camel coming towards me, I put spurs to my horse and rode home.

When camels are tied together in a long caravan with a little mouse-colored donkey leading the van, ridden by a long-legged Bedawy, who sits half-asleep smoking his pipe, you would think them the tamest and most innocent creatures in the world, but when they fall into a panic, they are beyond all control.  A few years ago a drove of camels was passing through the city of Damascus.  The Arabs drive camels like sheep, hundreds and sometimes thousands in a flock, and they look awkward enough.  When this drove entered the city, something frightened them, and they began to run.  Just imagine a camel running!  What a sight it must have been!  Hundreds of them went through the narrow streets, knocking over men and women and donkeys, upsetting the shopkeepers, and spilling out their wares on the ground, and many persons were badly bruised.  At length a carpenter saw them coming and put a timber across the street, which dammed up the infuriated tide of camels, and they dashed against one another until they were all wedged together, and thus their owners secured them.

In August, 1862, a famous Bedawin Chief, named Mohammed ed Dukhy, in Houran, east of the Jordan, rebelled against the Turkish Government.  The Druzes joined him, and the Turks sent a small army against them.  Mohammed had in his camp several thousand of the finest Arabian camels, and they were placed in a row behind his thousands of Arab and Druze horsemen.  Behind the camels were the women, children, sheep, cattle and goats.  When the Turkish army first opened fire with musketry, the camels made little disturbance, as they were used to hearing small arms, but when the Turkish Colonel gave orders to fire with cannon, “the ships of the desert” began to tremble.  The artillery thundered, and the poor camels could stand it no longer.  They were driven quite crazy with fright, and fled over the country in every direction in more than a Bull Run panic.  Some went down towards the Sea of Galilee, others towards the swamps of Merom, and hundreds towards Banias, the ancient Caesarea Philippi, and onwards to the West as far