| Show HIGH TIME Save By FLORENCE Everyone who ever went to a movie or watched television knows the West was won by the Fur and women had a part in the but the hero or the West was the horse THERE was a moment when the place of the horse as our national four legged hero was in That Get A Camel dramatic moment came in 1853 when Jefferson Davis who was then from Mississippi arose in his southern majesty to demand camels be established and utilized to fill the freight hauling needs of the arid American Drawled must have The men who are pushing through the desert and wilderness are shouting for an animal that can go without water for days and still carry a heavy pack on its DAVIS then became Secretary of War in President Pierce's He managed an appropriation of for the purchase of 78 camels from the A commission was sent overseas to get Americans of the mid were not world They were prone to concentrate upon the business at hand and allow other nations the same When this intrepid commission set so the story they did not even know what a camel looks IT MAY be they just wanted to have an excuse to stop in London for a little quick but are those who insist they stopped in London to make a side excursion to the where they made their first acquaintance with the animal they proposed to introduce to replace the Eventually they returned to the shores of our nation with a shipload of seasick sailors and groggy They ol all in THE PROJECT was doomed to self Americans are nothing if not sentimental The love affair between the cowboy and his is part of our but who loves a HE USED his camels to haul and at least once to stage a race in Sacramento on April The never posed a threat to the regal THE LAW was quietly wiped off the books in 1889 when sanity returned and people realized there were no wild or Thirty-one of the original shipment wound up in the possession of Sam when he bought them at auction in To begin the animal is He is Riding a they is about as pleasant as riding a canoe through Cataract Camels they rhey they they sway and they THE performance record of that first herd should have convinced the desert trekkers of the practical uses for the They went from San across the tern desert to Fort near a distance of Each animal was loaded with about pounds of THOSE same animals then turned around made a torturous trip to St Louis in just 20 The problem was not It was individual and simple reluctance to accept anything foreign as being better than anything THE DOOM of the project began with this rejection and finished with a hysteria in which Westerners began seeing wild camels infesting their taking over the grazing The battle suddenly was not so much between cattle and sheep as between horses and the invading Reports of wild camels became widespread between 1880 and 1890 in Arizona and New Nevada even passed a law forbidding camels running at large on public |
